Website UX

[X4]

Hi,

I'm very curious to implement/try julia-lang as a back-end language for real-time data-processing in a private long time project, but using your website as informal medium isn't easy. It's cold-starting an interested user into a longish "I'm better see my benchmarks" discussion and talking more about other languages than Julia itself. That turns people usually away, except those like me who know what it is before-hand. (currently compiling it)

Take http://haxe.org/ for example. They present you with their "main point" then introduce you into other "ideas and concepts", when you're finally bought they can say we always presented you a link to docs/tutorials and sample code from the "start to now". You see I don't even criticize your design, which is ok, but the way you present your content. It's a subtle, but effective change in my opinion. If you didn't write a lexer yet for synthax-highlighting, you can use a generic lexer to highlight your code. Or http://quickhighlighter.com

[StefanKarpinski]

Gotta be honest, the HaXe website turns me off immediately. I don't really want to see flashy graphics when I'm checking out a new programming language. I want to see what's different and interesting about the language. The HaXe site has an unattributed overblown quotation followed by a bunch of completely non-unique properties of the language: multiplatform, open source, familiar syntax, strictly typed, modern. Um, ok, you just described 90% of languages out there. There's nothing that tells me why I should use HaXe instead of anything else.

[raggi]

One of the things that made me really happy with Julia as I came to it a couple of months ago, was how immediately I found the manual, and how much it was like reading a book.

I think the site works great as it is. If someone wants to tart it up, I don't see a small, lightweight background piece under the header doing any significant damage. I would strongly recommend that the menu stay as obvious and accessible, and the content remains very high signal to noise ratio. I think this is a significant differentiator against many design-clappy websites out there today.

[StefanKarpinski]

Just closing this because it's not a programming language issue. Doesn't preclude design enhancements to the site.