I was going to write a long post but you really summarised my thoughts exactly. Haskell and Clojure don't even make my list of scientific programming languages.

I was going to write a long post but you really summarised my thoughts exactly. Haskell and Clojure don't even make my list of scientific programming languages. My old university switched from C++ to Python for teaching the physicists, which I think is a good move. For many scientists, Python has most of the tools they need to do their research effectively and there is no need to go into the more work-horse languages of C/C++/Fortran. If they need the more work-horse languages of C/C++/Fortran, there are plenty of resources available. The supercomputing consortium at my old university were also making a big push towards Python (over MATLAB) and, I think this is good, teaching scientists how to write and maintain code. Software Carpentry regularly came through and gave weekend sessions on tools like version control (which I have seen more and more scientists use) and how to write readable code. I think people are recognising the need to teach the basics of software engineering to scientists and it is catching on in Canada based on what I've seen from Compute Canada (the group in charge of all the academic supercomputers in Canada). I think as the current generation, who are now being taught to use these tools early on, becomes professors, we will see even more of this. Unfortunately it will take time but it is changing.