total newbie seeks to interact with data language [message #60983] |
Tue, 01 July 2008 15:48  |
Tom Roche
Messages: 11 Registered: July 2008
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Junior Member |
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Can someone point me toward one or more equivalents of "The Coder's
Guide to IDL"? or even "IDL for Dummies"? Why I ask:
I'm a "computer scientist" (BSCS, employment mostly in Java and Perl
with side trips into bash, C++, Lisp, et al) turned brand-new
environmental-science grad student working on atmospheric modeling. My
advisor just dumped a big bucket o' IDL in my lap; after the initial
"Breathless Horror and Disgust" wore off it seems I can kinda read it.
Now I wanna {run, debug, understand} it--how to start? I went looking
@ the vendor's site
http://www.ittvis.com/idl/idl_resources.asp
and was underwhelmed: java.sun.com that ain't! Fortunately I got
pointed here from
http://www.dfanning.com/
(which fortunately links
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.idl-pvwave?hl=en
which works, unlike ITTVIS' page, which links to
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&group=comp.lang.id l-pvwave
--talk about bad first impression) thanks to the fine folks @
Wikipedia. Unfortunately the material @
http://www.dfanning.com/documents/tips.html#Tutorials
seems to be at least one level above where I am WRT IDL, so I'm hoping
someone here can point me toward absolute-beginner material.
(Preferably free of charge, because I am now officially impoverished.)
Feel free to reply via the group or directly to me.
TIA, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche@pobox.com>
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