Perl PDL and OpenGL?

[iSina]

Me and some of my friend are planning to build a molecular visualization and editing tool that will also display the structure of the molecule on the screen (consider it as a some kind of graph structure with many verticez (say N) and usually somewhere between 3-4N edges if we consider organic molecules which are usually the large ones).

I was planning to use PDL (perl data language, because I know perl most extensively among all other languages) which has an opengl extension and can handle large calculations sufficiently well. I asked around some other forums and some people for advice. I have my doubts about interactiveness and performance. Would there be a considerable difference in terms of speed considering opengl implemented in perl and in c++?

My question is would you think using opengl through perl would satisfy my needs or would you propose a better alternative? And also what is the difference in opengl if I use it via C++ or via Perl or other languages.

To get the project going as fast as possible I have chosen the language which I know the best (perl) but ofcourse in the end it will be problematic I will change it. My second preferance would be java, and if not so willingly third would be c++ or c.

Thanks in advance for any advice...