If you want something high performance but don't want to go low level, I can't recommend julia enough. 

Syntax is clean, JIT compiles, multi processing/threading is simple. You can even use Python libraries for anything that isn't implemented in Julia - meaning after doing anything requiring performance you can use Sklearn for extra analysis and matplotlib for plotting. Deep learning and autodiff libraries, while not fully fledged out as Python's ecosystem is 🤌 

 Decent learning curve especially when coming from Python 

 Yeah, that's an interesting suggestion, thanks! Some people I know in academia use Julia and love it 

 Feel free to reach out if you need some advice, always love going back to it when I can. Used it for some dynamical systems a while back and did 99% of my deep learning assignments in Julia. Here's a code comparison of PyTorch vs Julia implementing AlexNet
https://i.nostr.build/ZLXx.png

https://i.nostr.build/rayB.png