Julia is by far my favorite language; I used it all throughout grad school for my research. The problem is that it doesn't have enough of a network effect in industry. I've begrudgingly switched to Python for my day-to-day work.

Actually, what is the current status of Julia? Can anyone in the know share a bit on the perspectives as they stand?

They're in the run-up to their first stable release at the moment (I think they're aiming for August, but could be wrong about that). I can't speak for popularity, but development is certainly going strong.

The biggest Julia cheerleaders are using Julia.