As a controls engineer, I agree. I've been trying to learn/switch to python after years of Matlab, but the installation effort, programming environment and lack of controls tools compared to Matlab have hindered me.
Actually if anyone has any suggestions to address those issues, I'd appreciate it.
Installing sage (http://www.sagemath.org/) addresses the installation effort pretty well. You get a giant binary of everything bundled together and working. It addresses the programming environment to some degres (it gives you a "notebook" similar to Mathematica). I used to be a hardcore matlab guy, now I find some tasks are easier in python.
I have toyed with R, and I think it's great. I love the data-focus of the language, and the capabilities of ggplot (for which there does not seem to be an equal to in Python). But to be honest as a controls guy, and not a software guy, learning new languages is not a trivial task for me. Python seems to meet both my computational and application aspirations.
Actually if anyone has any suggestions to address those issues, I'd appreciate it.