First of all, Julia is a proper multi purpose programming language! I consider that to be important, since I want to learn one language and then do most of my very different projects in it.

I haven't used Futhark or Halide, but I know they do some quite interesting compiler optimization.

We plan to use Julia's meta programming and code generation capabilities to enable similar optimizations. Hopefully, we can publish some new insights soon!

From a look at Halides and Futharks examples, I'd say that it will be more pleasant to write generic Julia GPU kernels and Julia enables a more interactive workflow.