So, looks like Julia would be an easier transition for a lot of academic scientists. What am I missing? I mostly use R and Python. Can anyone tell me briefly why I should use Julia over Python?

"Why Does Julia Work So Well?

There is an obvious reason to choose Julia:

    it's faster than other scripting languages, allowing 
    you to have the rapid development of Python/MATLAB/R 
    while producing code that is as fast as C/Fortran"

https://ucidatascienceinitiative.github.io/IntroToJulia/Html...

enriquto

yet the startup time remains slower...

subroutine

Also if you have any need to generate plots & graphs - RIP Julia. I was excited to try Julia, since it seemed to integrate some of the best features of each MATLAB, R, and Python. I was truly disappointed to discover that Julia would take minutes to render the exact same plots I was generating in Octave almost instantly.

dm3

There's PackageCompiler[0] which allows to precompile the packages you need for work into a system image. This means avoiding precompilation in the REPL every time you start up Julia. That's if you start with the custom system image.

However, it's a community effort and is somewhat non-trivial to get up and running with. Once Julia gets better precompilation/binary packaging support, common workflows like plotting will improve dramatically.

[0]: https://github.com/JuliaLang/PackageCompiler.jl