What language - platform use to data acquisiton/numerical work?

[Fernando Pérez]

Matteo wrote:

> The data analisys numerical procedures have to be done in matlab due
> to their complexity and specialization, and I fear even the plotting
> will have to be done in Matlab.

Absolutely false. Python will be just fine for this, coupled with anything 
from good ole gnuplot all the way to something like mayavi/vtk (with grace, 
dislin and many other options in between). Here are some examples:

http://www-hep.colorado.edu/~fperez/pub/topo_2412.b585m008.36.1000.slices/
http://www-hep.colorado.edu/~fperez/pub/topo_viz_sample.jpg
http://www-hep.colorado.edu/~fperez/pub/topo_vol_ray.jpg

Those are 3-d slices of 4-d datasets, with either multiple isosurfaces and cut 
planes with contour colormaps computed, or full-blown raytraced volume 
renderings. Those can be either sent automatically to html pages in 10 lines 
of code (try that in Matlab!) or can be manipulated interactively with mouse 
control of rotation, position and zoom level.

Believe me, unless you need to rely on a large amount of code which is 
_already_ written in matlab, you'll do just fine with python/Numeric/Scipy. 
Using weave (from scipy) inlining C for speed is a trivial exercise too. You 
can find some material on that topic here:
http://www-hep.colorado.edu/~fperez/python/python-c/

I know people who are doing multi-electron atom structure calculations in 
supercomputers using python, so I'm sure your problem can also be handled in 
python.

Good luck,

f.