[ptero]

While Matlab language is horrific, switching requires much more than that. Matlab has a lot of inertia in large scientific projects. It will change, eventually, but this is a slow process. Fortran was the tool for numerical computation for decades even when languages with better syntax were available because of its fast, rock solid and validated libraries.

On technical merits Matlab still comes ahead in fast plotting of large datasets. And Julia still has a reputation for a "go fast and break things" community and the corresponding cavalier response to bugs. Those will slowly change, but as of now, Matlab holds an advantage there. My 2c.