I agree. More work on latency, pre compilation and PackageCompiler is sorely needed. Julia is also behind on the version of LLVM that is being used, and apparently they are regressions in performance with newer versions. The fact that performance is an implementation detail is concerning, and it would be nice to standardize some of the language.

However, I think it is unfair to compare the inclusion of log10 to the work required to get solutions to these harder problems. I guess why not both? ;)