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

[Peter Hansen]

Matteo wrote:
> 
> The work involve:
> - a system of data acquisition (and control) from (of) a PLC via
> serial port. The data acquisition is in real time with low frequency
> (about 1 - 2 hz)
> - a big system of data analisys, pattern recognition, data
> visualization and heavy user interaction mostly for experiment with
> algorithms and for diagnostics
> - a end user system, mostly a wrapping of siplified GUI to the
> previous two subsystems.
> 
> I think I will handle serial port comm vith small C libraries, I don't
> know if Python is suited to the problem.
> Having the base drivers should not be a problem ro realize the data
> acquisition system in Python Or not?

Python, with appropriate serial port modules (as Chris suggested)
will do just fine.  No need for a small C library, and 1-2 Hz
is easily achievable (assuming you do not mean this is a mission
critical hard real-time system) on any PC with Python.

Others have already commented on the data analysis and GUI side.
I just wanted to mention that we use Python for roughly similar
kinds of work (haven't done much on the numerical processing side
yet, for lack of time) and it has never failed us.  Definitely 
a big time saver, and very robust, maintainable code seems to 
result from using it.

-Peter