I agree wholeheatedly. Python is everything matlab the language could hope to be and more, if you just want to crunch matrices python beats matlab as it's own game (just the broadcasting features in numpy alone are an amazing step up from matlab's approach, let alone trying to ingest data which isn't a csv). But, some of those toolboxes are pretty damn good and don't have an equivilent in python. For example, if you're doing almost anything with control theory then there's some pretty killer toolboxes that don't have any real competition, especially in the open-source space (there's some basic stuff but it's not particularly usable).