I don’t want to turn this thread into Julia vs Matlab, so if you are interested I am happy to provide more details in private mesaages.
I will only try to tell a condensed story here.
I tried translating three codes (1) simple Bayesian Vector Autoregression code (2) an algorithm based on the Kalman Filter and also (3) more Bayesian VAR code with a Kalman Filter (a complex conjugation of 1 and 2).
The Kalman one (2) was comparable to Matlab. I asked ppl around me who are holding Julia courses for help and they looked at it and suggested it wasn’t language specific but a BLAS thing and that it is normal to be comparable.
The other codes are slower and I guess it is because I don’t know the language and cannot code well in it. I am NOT a programmer and I have so much experience only with Matlab that I get annoyed when things don’t work like I expect them to, but that is NOT Julia’s problem. And matlab is pretty high level language, so it is not that close to real programming. For example i didnt even know much about types before I started with Julia.
Overall, the fixed costs of coming to a new language are really high, depending on the individual circumstances and I tried multiple times to pay them only to be frustrated again and again. For example, Bayesian Econometrics relies heavily on loops and doing the same thing 20 000 times. And julia has its own scoping rules for a for loop that were a huge hurdle for me to overcome. And when I put it in a function to get it to work like I expect it to and had an error, I couldn’t even use the debugger for help because back when I started there was no debugger (julia 0.5)…
TL, DR (and to make this post more relevant to the topic) learning something new comes at a time cost, which not many may have the ability to pay and when for them something else works, it gets almost impossible. So if one wants to have it adopted like the topic strives to I think thinking about people like me (which might be in the audience) could be beneficial.
P. S. I still haven’t given up on the language, I still lurk around here nad try to follow the developmens and try from time to time new things and hope to learn it to find that “speed” and “ease” but so far I feel I am well away from that.