Not much more than an anecdote, but I found working with julia quite a lot of fun. It was not data science, but since julia is more or less aimed at data scienc

Not much more than an anecdote, but I found working with julia quite a lot of fun. It was not data science, but since julia is more or less aimed at data science, I'd predict that my positive experience means julia is a very good choice there too. There is the "time to first plot" issue, and I found that the "efficient as C, easy as Python" motto really means "efficient as C XOR easy as Python", but all in all, it's very easy to write stuff very cleanly, and the path to effiency is quite natural if you know where to look, and the metaprogramming makes it that more powerful.