Lots of informative advice, I am very grateful to all of you. Thanks again. I think I will go with Python or Ruby after I check out the resources in the links that were posted. I plan to build my knowledge but as a person with a science background, I'm happiest when I'm solving a problem so I definitively see the merit in working on the project whist learning.

I don't think I have any further questions - I got loads more helpful advice than I thought I would ever get and again, I'm very grateful. The only couple things I feel are worth mentioning is that I am using a Mac and I have actually written a couple subroutine packages for HPC in FORTRAN but they are nothing too special as FORTRAN syntax is very simplistic.