[mkborregaard]

What makes you say it lacks critical mass? I don't think that's accurate, but of course it takes time. Implementation time is important, yes - but julia is not just a fast-to-run-language, which is essentially the point - it is a fast-to-implement language.

[j7ake]

At least in the field of computational biology most people use R or python because of the wealth of statistical packages and biology-specific packages (biomaRt) that makes implementing and testing models on biological data much faster than in Julia.

It's always this problem, if everybody is using R, it is hard to migrate to Julia. But in order to migrate to Julia you need people to stop using R and switch to Julia.

[rattray]

Is there no Julia wrapper around biomaRt? Would it be challenging to create and maintain?

(I don't mean to imply that _you_ should be the one to do it - I'm genuinely curious)