[adgjlsfhk1]

> Julia code will be slower than optimized C and C++ code

This isn't true. Optimized Julia will pretty much always tie optimized C/C++. This shouldn't be surprising. They use the same compiler and run on the same hardware and both let you use inline assembly where needed. Octavian often beats MKL at matmul, and the Julia math library is written in Julia and doesn't lose performance from doing so.

Rewriting to Julia instead of C/C++ has the benefit that the code is still readable and improvable by scientists who wrote the code in the first place.

[nickvincent]

Yeah, that's what I'm basically thinking: for scientists who already like Python because it's readable and mostly matches the mental model of what they care about, being able to catalyze the switch to a different, faster language that still reads nicely could really drive adoption. But it's a stretch for sure!