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Re: General info question for newbie [message #26827 is a reply to message #26826]

Mon, 01 October 2001 10:56

David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001

Senior Member

Chris (bumblebelly75@hotmail.com) writes:

> Having dl'd the IDL 5.4 demo and played around a bit, I wondered how
> this would help me in a GIS environment and what advantages it would
> hold over a regular programming language?

IDL and a GIS environment are two mostly different things,
it seems to me, with the occasional overlap. If you are
a GIS type person, the advantages of IDL would be
(I should think) to expand your notions of how data might
be used to create information. And specifically, how
remotely sensed data might be used to create information.

> The opinion seems to be that
> there is less coding involved, but how much less?

Compared to what? To C programming? A lot less.
To Visual Basic programming? Not so much less.

> And how hard is it
> to learn what is essentially a new language?

Any new language is hard to learn. How long would
it take you to learn Spanish? If you were moving
to Spain in three months and your livelihood depended
on speaking the language, you might learn it faster
than if you just wanted to whisper romantic poems
by Pablo Neruda in your sweetheart's ear in Pablo's
native language. I've been working with IDL for 12+
years. I'm still learning it. :-)

Cheers,

David

--
David W. Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
Phone: 970-221-0438, E-mail: david@dfanning.com
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Toll-Free IDL Book Orders: 1-888-461-0155

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[Message index]

		Re: General info question for newbie By: bumblebelly75 on Mon, 01 October 2001 14:43
		Re: General info question for newbie By: David Fanning on Mon, 01 October 2001 11:20
		Re: General info question for newbie By: Paul van Delst on Mon, 01 October 2001 11:03
		Re: General info question for newbie By: David Fanning on Mon, 01 October 2001 10:56
		Re: General info question for newbie By: Pavel A. Romashkin on Mon, 01 October 2001 14:47

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