ML needs a new programming language – Interview with Chris Lattner

It's a low level language with a high level interface. In theory, GC aside, you should be able to write code as performant as C++ without having to actually write C++. It's also homoiconic and the compiler is part of the language’s API, so you can do neat things with macros that let more or less you temporarily turn it into a different language.

In practice, the Julia package ecosystem is weak and generally correctness is not a high priority. But the language is great, if you're willing to do a lot of the work yourself.