Python and Scientific Computing

This interesting blog post argues that in recent years Python has gained libraries making it the choice language for scientific computing (over MATLAB and R primarily).

I find the details discussed in the post interesting. Two small points that occur to me are that in several domains Mathematica is still the tool of choice. From what I could see nothing free, let alone open source, is even in the same ballpark in these cases. Second, I find it interesting that several of the people commenting mentioned IPython. It seems to be gaining ground as the primary environment many people use.