Need advice/suggestion for small project

[AEB]

Hello, my supervisor has requested that I write a program to display
2D waves in 3D using Python.  Basically I have a time series file that
has the heights of the wave over time steps, and I want to extrude
these waves lengthwise so that they appear in a 3D manor.  I am not
very familiar with Python development, could someone point me in a
good direction, and maybe comment if this is a little to ambitious for
a first time python user?

I do have moderate programming experience in other languages (java, c/c
++, vb.net).