Julia is still a very young language, and it's common to hear people talking of hoped for improvements in the compiler which will further speed up the language. According to the current benchmarks, Julia is consistently (and incredibly!) within a factor 1.5-2 or Fortran's speed, and this is consistent with my observations. I'm wondering if anyone has any idea of how much we can realistically expect this to improve? Are there any fundamental barriers which will prevent Julia catching up or even overtaking Fortran on the raw speed front?
I ask as I'm currently doing some work in numerical simulations, where we run experiments whose run-time is measured in weeks. For this work, Julia running slower by a factor of 1.5 or 2 is not really tolerable. Thanks!
