Was going to say that Julia might be the long term best open source replacement for closed source scientific computing (Matlab, Mathematica...etc). In some ways it is already just as good, but in others, it has a long way to go. From a speed perspective, it is top notch.

I haven't tried Julia, it sounds like it could be better in the long run but I'd be shocked if the ecosystem is equivalent already.

Luckily, you can call many Python libraries directly from your Julia code: https://github.com/JuliaPy/PyCall.jl

Yea, PyCall makes it trivial to write a quick Julia wrapper around a python library. It's also really handy for porting python code to Julia. Start by wrapping all your existing functions with PyCall and then replace them one by one with Julia functions.