What is the best tool to develop Web-based science/stats/engineering application?

Hi,

I need to develop a web-based application for scientific/statistics/engineering calculations and I am looking for advice on the best tool to create it. I don't want to pick up my favorite programming language only to know later that I could have done the same job with something better.

The general structure is the following:

- users access a web page and are able to give some inputs
- inputs are processed internally. I will need this language to have a good library of pre-made science/engineering tools. I need to make heavy use of science/statistics/engineering calculations like I would do with Matlab or Octave offline, for example. I am trying not to reinvent the wheel by writing my own code wherever possible.
- the web page will need to display outputs (such as 2d plots, 3d plots, contour plots, etc., calculation results, etc.)

On top of that I would like to use HTML/CSS to make user front-ends.

Any advice on what language should I learn to do this more efficiently?


Thanks

 

I have a friend who is a big fan of using Mathematica and their graphing objects for tasks like this. Obviously, engineering people are more interested in actually reading, making sense of, and interpreting the graphs and charts than business people. I think Wolfram Alpha functionality is available via API as well?