Just a thought, but perhaps it's the small community and independent culture of Julia that has led to the high quality of its software. Small groups of highly passionate people can accomplish a lot! If I recall the history correctly, scientific Python (numpy, scipy, etc) developed similarly at first and has mostly supplanted Matlab, Fortran, and other tools. There was a point in time when Python was considered niche and not for "serious" work :).
Hard disagree. I think some people (not necessarily you, but way too many people) weirdly envy too much that "lone/few geniuses" image, and when they see bigger communities and their problem, they fallaciously/unfairly assume it's because of the size of the community (and not say, unnecessary bureaucracy that a small part of that community decided to have/had early on long before they got big).
One of Julia's often complained about issues is that it could use way more developers than it has now. No amount of romanticizing a small community or "independent culture"(which I just can't see going away due to where a lot of people that come to Julia are coming from in the first place) is going to fix that, just more people coming aboard the ship.
