First Steps with Julia

If you’re looking to try out Julia, here’s the first few things to do.

Note

This post is compiled from the “First Steps” series that appeared in the original version of the Julia For Data Science newsletter.
It has been updated and condensed for 2025.

Download Julia

To download Julia, use the instructions at https://julialang.org/downloads. For convenience, we’ll repeat the installation method most people will use:

Copy/paste in terminal:

curl -fsSL https://install.julialang.org | sh

Copy/paste in Windows Command Prompt:

winget install julia -s msstore

The above command will install the juliaup installation manager for Julia. This is generally recommended over a manual download since juliaup will let you know when new versions are available.

Tip

Open the Julia REPL (read-eval-print-loop) by typing julia in the terminal.

Install Packages

Julia has an amazing package manager: Pkg (more on Pkg in a future post) that has two methods of operation:

julia> using Pkg

julia> Pkg.add("StatsBase")

julia>

(@v1.11) pkg> # type ']' to enter Pkg mode

(@v1.11) pkg> add StatsBase

julia>  # type backspace to go back to Julia mode