I wrote a tool to visualise algorithms for binary decision diagrams [1], also in an academic context, where the problem was basically the same: Does the code still run in ten years? In particular, the assumption is that I will not be around then, and no one will have any amount of time to spend on maintenance.
In the end, I chose to write it in C++ with minimal dependencies (only X11, OpenGL and stb_truetype.h), with custom GUI, and packed all resources into a single executable.
A lot of effort, but if it causes the application to survive 5x as long then it is probably worth spending twice the time.