In my opinion the most important role in its adoption was having researchers putting it in application in their field. In a way it was Julia's killer app. Consi

In my opinion the most important role in its adoption was having researchers putting it in application in their field. In a way it was Julia's killer app. Considering it is made for technical computing, this showed that it is useful and actually *used* for its purpose, and not something that some researchers have academic fun with. This is not to say that languages meant for academic purposes are bad but rather that it isn't something which will make a language popular.