[catinsocks]

You can see it as an alternative to Matlab/R (sorta)/numpy not C.

People only ever used C when speed was crucial and depending on what you were comfortable in or what you had learned maybe Fortran for speed instead of C.

Julia is meant for scientific computing with some nice features. As I see it it is similar enought to Matlab to be easily learned by those who use Matlab but has enough goodies that it can be a viable alternative.

Programming isn't about being specific it is about accomplishing a task and many times yes you don't want to have to worry about the details as long as it works the way it should.

[plg]

I agree with what you say. More and more though as I get on in my career as a scientist I realize though that the details turn out to matter, sometimes a great deal.

Anyway I'm all in favour of an open, fast MATLAB alternative