I'm leaning towards making something in Ruby, as I'm more familiar with it. Then I can throw a few dozen (hundred?) million pre-calculated primes at it, and look for macro-scale patterns, without having to do much calculation at all. Just plotting points.
Maybe it's time to dive deeper into Objective C and / or OpenGL. I've got a few ideas that would be fun to try in real-time, but most of the more "fun" programming languages have poor / slow graphics libraries, and something low level lets you handle millions of entries without breaking a sweat.
Regarding diving deeper into Obj-C/OpenGL, you could also consider prototyping your ideas quickly using something like Quartz Composer. I don't know any specifics on whether it'd deal properly with a large data-set, but the learning curve is not steep at all and it might get you going quickly.
I've seen QC, poked at it a couple times, but never in depth. Any recommendations for resources?
Usually I'm struck by how unbelievably awesome the UI is, and how scores of similar attempts have been incomprehensibly awful. Meanwhile, Apple comes out with QC, a fast, elegant, simple version that goes almost totally unnoticed. Weird.
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I'm leaning towards making something in Ruby, as I'm more familiar with it. Then I can throw a few dozen (hundred?) million pre-calculated primes at it, and look for macro-scale patterns, without having to do much calculation at all. Just plotting points.
Maybe it's time to dive deeper into Objective C and / or OpenGL. I've got a few ideas that would be fun to try in real-time, but most of the more "fun" programming languages have poor / slow graphics libraries, and something low level lets you handle millions of entries without breaking a sweat.
Regarding diving deeper into Obj-C/OpenGL, you could also consider prototyping your ideas quickly using something like Quartz Composer. I don't know any specifics on whether it'd deal properly with a large data-set, but the learning curve is not steep at all and it might get you going quickly.
I've seen QC, poked at it a couple times, but never in depth. Any recommendations for resources?
Usually I'm struck by how unbelievably awesome the UI is, and how scores of similar attempts have been incomprehensibly awful. Meanwhile, Apple comes out with QC, a fast, elegant, simple version that goes almost totally unnoticed. Weird.