Interesting article in Nature [message #83034] |
Wed, 30 January 2013 15:24 |
penteado
Messages: 866 Registered: February 2018
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Senior Member Administrator |
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It is not everyday that choosing IDL over other languages gets
discussed in Nature:
"The algorithms to be incorporated were varied, and included codes for
estimating snow coverage, grain size and absorption of solar radiation
by dust and black carbon. They had been written in IDL, a specialized
programming language used by many researchers. Geographers, remote
sensing experts and software programmers contributed.
Most computer scientists would assume that such a system would take
years, not weeks, to develop. The algorithms would presumably have to
be rewritten in a standard language such as C++, Java or Python, or
one that could run on a fast computer system or infrastructure, such
as Google’s MapReduce model.
But, in my experience, there is no need to rewrite scientific
algorithms for bigdata systems. Rewriting only increases the barriers
to communication between scientists and computer engineers. Rewriting
can also introduce costly errors."
From
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/493473a
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