I do not think Julia ever intended to be a Python clone. Julia was created in 2009 when Python was not as popular as today.

I think the statement is a strange one to make about a language that emerged from a PhD thesis. While one could say the objectives of Julia's design were academic (e.g. multiple dispatch) and more attention could have been paid to the practical application of the approach (e.g. where and how do we cache all this machine code we are generating), I find it incredulous to say a six year long PhD dissertation process was not a design phase.

The thesis in question can be found here: https://github.com/JeffBezanson/phdthesis/blob/master/main.p...