We present an algorithm for computing zero-dimensional tropical varieties based on triangular decomposition and Newton polygon methods. From it, we derive algorithms for computing points on and links of higher-dimensional tropical varieties, using intersections with affine hyperplanes to reduce the dimension to zero. We use the algorithms to show that the tropical Grassmannians $${\mathcal {G}}_{3,8}$$ and $${\mathcal {G}}_{4,8}$$ are not simplicial.

We introduce two new packages, Nemo and Hecke, written in the Julia programming language for computer algebra and number theory. We demonstrate that high performance generic algorithms can be implemented in Julia, without the need to resort to a low-level C implementation. For specialised algorithms, we use Julia's efficient native C interface to wrap existing C/C++ libraries such as Flint, Arb, Antic and Singular. We give examples of how to use Hecke and Nemo and discuss some algorithms that we have implemented to provide high performance basic arithmetic.