Tangentially related: I've been working on a plotting tool (https://github.com/LaurentRDC/pandoc-plot) that supports many plotting toolkits. I recently added support for Plots.jl. I can't believe how SLOW it is to get from running a script to getting output. 10x slower than matplotlib, 100x slower than Gnuplot.
The first time you plot using Plots.jl it will take a long time as it compiles the package, and maybe even has to download things. But subsequent plots should be fast. Unless each time you run the script you are starting over again—but that's not the best way to use Julia.
