language to develop engineering app

[hambone79]

I am an engineer that is interested in creating a program to help engineers perform routine calculations (heat transfer, fluid mechanics, machine design, statics, etc.). I want to write something that is cross platform and has a simple GUI where the engineer can pick a topic from a drop down menu, then pick the calculator they are interested in running. Right now I have absolutely no idea what programming language I should use for this project, but here is a list of the requirements I need:

1. Something that is fairly easy to learn, or has enough in common with Perl that I can pick it up easy.
2. Something that will be easy to create a GUI in.
3. Something with built in math functions and the ability to handle vector/matrix math.
4. Something that is cross platform. At the very least it should run on Windows, Solaris, and Linux.

[diesch]

Have a look at http://www.scipy.org/

[hambone79]

That looks promising, but I need to add one more thing to my list of requirements:

5. The program needs to be easy to install so it should really be something that can be compiled to a binary. Basically I don't want to require the engineers downloading this program to install a Perl or Python interpreter.

[diesch]

Maybe that can be done using http://pypi.python.org/pypi/bbfreeze/ (but I never tried).

[shadylookin]

I always thought enineers were supposed to love fortran:P

You could use c/c++

[hambone79]

A friend of mine has volunteered to help me out so it looks like it will be written in Java.

[Can+~]

A friend of mine has volunteered to help me out so it looks like it will be written in Java.

What a way to kill the fun :(.

But at least is portable (although people needs the JVM), and easy to make interfaces (Netbeans).

[blwizard]

A friend of mine has volunteered to help me out so it looks like it will be written in Java.

Java is a very solid choice, I would also possibly choose python.

[mmix]

LabWindows/CVI

http://www.ni.com/lwcvi/