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Re: Interesting Rant [message #51310 is a reply to message #51306]

Tue, 14 November 2006 11:13

Richard Edgar
Messages: 8
Registered: February 2006

Junior Member

Paul van Delst wrote:

>> Someone sent me a link to this interesting IDL rant this morning:
>>
>> http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/07/sstvinc2/research/st upid.html
>
> Hee hee. I thought it was pretty funny. I probably would've done
> something similar back when I was one of dem young whippersnappers
> (well, I would've if anything but Fortran was available....)
>
> Apart from the fact that some of the info was just wrong, the rant shows
> the writers lack of experience with programming languages in general. To
> say nothing of exiting college and entering the real world where being
> able to distinguish and effectively handle the differences between the
> the way things *should* be and the way they actually *are* are a
> definite plus.

If I were to write my list of IDL annoyances, I think mine would be
somewhat different to this.

I'd comment that the first one, about 7/2 vs 7/2.0 is a place where I'd
say that IDL definitely does the right thing. And comment 12 about
comparisons contradicts the first comment (and seems to show a lack of
understanding of floating point arithmetic).

Row-major vs column major is a silly point... you just need to know
which way the language does it, and that's the end of the matter. And
I'd dispute the bit about 'every other language in the history of
mankind' too ;-)

There is some basis for the comments about the 'compiler' and need for
recompilation. I'd say that this is due to a bit of bad nomenclature on
IDL's part, since IDL is more an interpreted than a compiled language.

The complaint about inconsistency in how variables are passed to
routines is fair enough. ISTR my encounter with this was based on
passing a structure vs. passing elements of the structure. However, the
passing method is irrelevant. All I should have to do is declare whether
I intend to modify the variables or not, and whether they should be
defined on entry. Something like INTENT(IN), INTENT(OUT) and
INTENT(INOUT) would be ideal ;-)

Richard

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[Message index]

		Re: Interesting Rant By: Braedley on Wed, 15 November 2006 07:47
		Re: Interesting Rant By: Jo Klein on Wed, 15 November 2006 07:20
		Re: Interesting Rant By: Maarten[1] on Wed, 15 November 2006 07:17
		Re: Interesting Rant By: K. Bowman on Wed, 15 November 2006 06:47
		Re: Interesting Rant By: greg michael on Wed, 15 November 2006 07:03
		Re: Interesting Rant By: David Fanning on Wed, 15 November 2006 06:10
		Re: Interesting Rant By: Maarten[1] on Wed, 15 November 2006 05:25
		Re: Interesting Rant By: Robbie on Tue, 14 November 2006 17:13
		Re: Interesting Rant By: James Kuyper on Tue, 14 November 2006 15:25
		Re: Interesting Rant By: Richard Edgar on Tue, 14 November 2006 11:13
		Re: Interesting Rant By: David Fanning on Tue, 14 November 2006 11:09
		Re: Interesting Rant By: news.qwest.net on Tue, 14 November 2006 10:56
		Re: Interesting Rant By: Paul Van Delst[1] on Tue, 14 November 2006 10:36
		Re: Interesting Rant By: David Fanning on Wed, 15 November 2006 10:44
		Re: Interesting Rant By: Earl F. Glynn on Wed, 15 November 2006 09:19
		Re: Interesting Rant By: Paul Van Delst[1] on Thu, 16 November 2006 08:02
		Re: Interesting Rant By: Earl F. Glynn on Wed, 15 November 2006 09:07
		Re: Interesting Rant By: Jeff Hester on Sat, 18 November 2006 13:42
		Re: Interesting Rant By: fburton on Wed, 15 November 2006 10:24
		Re: Interesting Rant By: Paolo Grigis on Wed, 15 November 2006 09:02

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