Matlab already allows you to omit the 'end' from function definitions, which many people find easier to read, and my experience seeing people transition from Matlab/Octave to Python+Numpy+Scipy is that people get on board with indentation-delimited blocks, because that's the way they write code anyway. But I agree - at the moment it's a pretty trivial thing. As a heavy user of Matlab, R and Py+N+S I'm looking forward to trying out Julia.
I personally found it worse to read, because it makes function blocks different from other blocks. Also, if you define nested functions in Matlab, all functions in the file have to be closed with end anyway.
Nothing is as bad, though, as the default Matlab behavior of not indenting first-level function code. This makes it really hard to scan a file with multiple functions and see where they separate.
