I would strongly recommend looking at R. I started using Python and Pandas and when I ran into issues with work requiring M$ Office documents R just amazes.

Also the amazing growth in R in just the last few years. http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/R.html (O know that ranking is not the greatest argument for a language BUT it does show (somewhat) its growth. Specifically the flexibility of R (12 ways to do one things) has allowed it to evolve quickly and the libraries are just amazing. RStudio has changed R with Hadley Wickham's ggplot2, dplyr, reshape2, tidyr and etc. It just makes the the language do so much and change so quickly.

I use to be in love with all things Python and now I still respect Python and Pandas but I kind of gone to more domain specific tools.