Matlab, R, and Python are powerful but either costly or slow for some data mining work I'd like to do. I'm considering using Javascript both for speed, good visualization libraries, and to be able to use the browser as an interface.
The first question I faced is the obvious one for science programming, how to do I/O to data files? The second is client-side or server-side? The last question, can I make something that is truly portable i.e. put it all on a USB and run from that?
I've spent a couple of weeks looking for answers. Server2go seems to address client/server needs which I think means I can get data to and from the programs on the client side. Server2go also allows running from a USB. The data files I work with are usually XML and there seem to be several javascript converters to JSON.
However, after all the looking around, I'm not sure if my approach makes sense. So before I commit further, any advice/thoughts/guidance on Javascript as a portable tool for scientific data processing?