[mayanklahiri]

When Python's symbolic computation abilities are even at a tenth of Mathematica's (especially for discrete functions like we love in computer science), I'd be more than happy to switch over. Perhaps someone could integrate Python with Sage or Octave.

[jamii]

http://www.sagemath.org/

Not quite as swish as mathematica but definitely better than 1/10.

[dnautics]

holy heck, I think I'm going to start doing things in sage. Thanks!!!

[dnautics]

not even. I'm working on a mathematica notebook that (mathematically, not physically) simulates the action of an enzyme... It generates a 120x120 matrix of kinetic parameters, symbolically solves to make sure there aren't contradictions (mostly conservation of mass), and then solves the 120-parameter differential equation. Then it does it 1000 times and collates the data (although I'm sure python could do that).