best tool / programming language for data visualization [closed]

Question

Up till now I mostly used excel to plot any data I retrieve from MySQL using PHP, (with occasionally a JS library like HighCharts to plot data). This is not really an option when I want more complex charts/visualizations or if there are to many records (excel gets slooooow) so I'm looking for alternatives. However, there are so many options! I've downloaded and tried things like R and Processing several times but I'm not convinced yet this is the right tool for 'just' charting my data in a nice way.

So... im curious to here opinions about the best way to go. Learn Python? Really dive into Java/processing? any other options? (or stick with PHP and you have a real flexible graphing library available? ;) )

Answer 1

I think Python is great for quick and rich data processing.