[NicolasL-S]

I've been dreaming of something like this for many years. Stata has many strengths. It has a ridiculously simple syntax, much of the data "cleaning" often happens under the radar, it has a nice gui for models and plots, and visualizing datasets is easy and pleasant. This makes it accessible to undergraduate students without a programming background. It also has obvious downsides. It is proprietary, it can be very slow, and using Mata to write one own's estimation procedure is quite painful (it was last time I did). Julia seems like a promising solution to these problems.

Two potential approach:

1. Calling Julia from Stata like the authors suggest (instead of using mata). This could work if the interface isn't too cumbersome. The ability to compile Julia binaries could also allow to do this without running Julia in the background. Of course, one still needs to pay for Stata.

2. Rewriting Stata in Julia using macros. This sounds like a massive undertaking, but could be the best solution in the long run in my opinion (but would sacrifice the gui).