| Re: Plea for IDL 2000 (was: a plea for more reliable mathematical routines) [message #17245 is a reply to message #17138] |
Sat, 18 September 1999 00:00   |
Craig Markwardt
Messages: 1869
Registered: November 1996
|
Senior Member |
|
|
davidf@dfanning.com (David Fanning) writes:
> What I don't understand is the heat behind these
> feelings that IDL is a big hack. Heck, go use something
> else if you feel that way. It's a competitive marketplace
> that IDL lives in and you are free to buy (or build)
> anything that does the job for you. IDL only exists because
> *somebody* keeps buying it.
Hi David--
I love IDL. It's got a wonderfully expressive language, powerful
vectorizable operators, and mountains of library software (my own, and
from others). As an interactive analysis language it has profoundly
changed how I work (for the better). I have made software the beats
the socks off its C/FORTRAN equivalents.
I could hate IDL. It's got a quirky language with objects tacked on.
I have made a large investment in mountains of software that won't run
on any other system. IDL is not very friendly to the
programmer/maintainer and has introduced and obsoleted several
language features over the course of a year or less. Software bugs
persist through several versions. When a bug appears we have no
recourse in fixing it, since we don't have the core IDL source code.
For example, witness the arguments about mathematical functions. I
have spent a profound amount of my time working around IDL bugs.
Making a simple hardcopy in direct graphics is a serious
inconvenience.
Love/Hate, that's what it is!
Craig
--
------------------------------------------------------------ --------------
Craig B. Markwardt, Ph.D. EMAIL: craigmnet@cow.physics.wisc.edu
Astrophysics, IDL, Finance, Derivatives | Remove "net" for better response
------------------------------------------------------------ --------------
|
|
|
|
comp.lang.idl-pvwave archive
Members
Search
Help
Login
Home
