Very exciting. The real power of MATLAB likes in its toolboxes, though, I wonder if there will be an easy (and possibly automatic) way to convert toolboxes.
One more thing: it would be awesome if the `manipulate` from Mathematica could be incorporated somehow in that web interface. See:
MATLAB toolboxes are simply awesome for users, even though they are expensive. We hope that if enough people find julia useful, many such libraries will be built. Having written a ton of mex and matlab stuff, and a lot of julia libraries, I find that julia is nicer to use personally - but of course I am biased. :-)
I do believe that open source + good compiler + simple C/Fortran calling interface will lead to others being able to write toolboxes in julia itself and plugin libraries when needed.
One more thing: it would be awesome if the `manipulate` from Mathematica could be incorporated somehow in that web interface. See:
http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/videos/manipulate/