Pardon the possible naïveté, but I'm so old I remember Ada. Seems that language was designed to address a very similar problem space. What does Julia offer that Ada doesn't? Or perhaps: why is ada so deficient that spending 2+ years inventing a new language was a better proposition than taking the time to improve Ada?
If the problem IS that it's huge and inelegant, then the solution isn't to try to improve it, but to start from a clean slate. Julia looks like a reasonable attempt.
