v0.7.0-rc2 was announced on August 3 (rc1 had been released a couple of days before, but not announced): “It’s intended to give developers a chance to get ready for the full 0.7 release by trying it out and testing for issues.” The final v0.7.0 was announced on August 8, less than five days later.
v1.0.0-rc1 had been announced 12 hours before that, including similar language: “It’s intended to give developers a chance to get ready for the release of 1.0 by trying it out and testing for issues.” Developers had one day to get ready.
Even counting from the unnanounced v0.7.0-rc1 there was barely a week until the final release of v1.0.0. It’s not exactly comparable to other languages, where you get a couple of weeks for minor releases and substantially more when the changes are important (as 0.7/1.0 clearly was in the case of Julia).
Edit: it’s done now, which of course the important thing, and the only harm is a bit of confusion until the situation settles down. The problem is not that it was fast but that it was unexpectedly fast, even by Julia standards (I’ve noticed now that previous releases also had a 4-6 weeks RC period).