[buckwild]

A lot of times, I really don't think there is a need for a whole new language. I use R and python for scientific computing all of the time. There are packages which have been well validated and a community of folks who support the software. Making a new language may be interesting, but if it doesn't really bring anything new to the table, it's just asking for a micro-niche user base (just think of the million and one web frameworks out there).

Julia looks interesting, but I don't see anything that makes me jump up and say, "I want to use that!" Everything I have seen so far can already be done with R, Python, or a combination of the two. If there are a few minor drawbacks to any process in R or Python, I would rather live with it than learn yet another language. Speed is not an issue -- if it is then I am likely coding incorrectly. If I have coded correctly, then it is worth taking the time to create a C library (and since everything else is in perspective, this is just "monkey coding" and never takes as long as we think).

I wish all of the folks who are bright enough to create their own language would voice their wants and needs to the existing coding communities to see if their needs can't be met rather than making something brand new. This kind of community interaction is crucial for a language to mature. Wouldn't you rather have a few very mature languages rather than a million young ones (each of which has its own pros and cons)?

[alephnil]

Languages like matlab, R and Python (via numpy), let you do efficient computations as long as you can let them happen in the core, that is written in C and Fortran. This is very often possible, but in some cases you find that it is not, and then it will either be very slow or you need to write a C module for it. None of these languages is designed to make it easy to make a compiler/runtime that is from the ground up efficient. They are instead a rather inefficient interpreter with a really good library. This is where Julia differ. It is designed exactly to be efficient from the ground up.ground up.