“Those people were our early converts—people who came for performance".
That was entirely my case. After being using Python for a while and dropping to Cython in the performance bottlenecks (and evaluating other options), I was really longing for a language where I could have it all.
When I first heard of Julia, in a highlighting package for Latex in the summer of 2013, my first thought was "oh no!, yet another high-level language, we already have Python people!".
However, as soon as I read the "Why we created Julia" I just knew it was it, I finnaly could have my cake and eat it too. And in a matter of months I substituted almost all codes used in my half-the-way PhD to Julia.
Ha, ah! After a more careful read, I noticed this: "with the speed of C or Ruby"... I'm pretty sure Ruby performance was never a positive characteristic anywhere (right?). I wonder if this is a writing error or the journalist ignorance. Anyway, the article uncovers very nice facts about the history of Julia.