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Re: Question about IDL books [message #47347 is a reply to message #47295]

Tue, 07 February 2006 11:21

Benjamin Hornberger is currently offline

Benjamin Hornberger
Messages: 258
Registered: March 2004

Senior Member

pimpk24@hotmail.com wrote:
> I was wondering if the books on idl out there - specifically David
> Fanning's and Liam Gumley" present most of their information from the
> perspective of using the GUI developers evnvironment or the Command
> line to run IDL.
>
> I use the command line / Unix to run IDL on a mac, and would thus
> prefer more examples of how to do things in this environment.
>
> Any insight appreciated
>

To add a "neutral" person's opinion: I think both books are fine for
beginners (in IDL and pretty much also in programming). As was mentioned
before, Liam's book is more structured, while David's is more tutorial /
how-to style.

I'm not sure what you mean by "GUI developer's environment". If you mean
the GUI builder, none of the books covers it, but most people advise
against using it anyway. If you mean the IDL development environment vs.
the Unix command line, none of the books makes much of a difference
because it's not necessary. The IDLDE includes a command line which
behaves like the naked command line, and most of the stuff around is
just for convenience for the people who prefer clicking the mouse rather
than typing a command.

Both books concentrate on command-line / procedural IDL use for the most
part and cover GUI development in the end (anyway, you should know how
to use IDL on the command line before trying to build a GUI). As for GUI
development, I think Liam's intro is easier to understand for the
beginner, but David includes more of the little tips and tricks which
come in handy from time to time.

My group owns both books, and I found both of them useful for learning
IDL. Now I don't need them much any more. For advanced IDL programming,
Ronn Kling's books are quite good (and pretty much the only ones out
there as far as I know).

Hope that helps,
Benjamin

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[Message index]

		Question about IDL books By: pimpk24 on Sun, 05 February 2006 09:44
		Re: Question about IDL books By: Benjamin Hornberger on Tue, 07 February 2006 11:21
		Re: Question about IDL books By: David Fanning on Tue, 07 February 2006 09:38
		Re: Question about IDL books By: liamgumley on Tue, 07 February 2006 09:36
		Re: Question about IDL books By: liamgumley on Tue, 07 February 2006 09:34
		Re: Question about IDL books By: pimpk24 on Tue, 07 February 2006 09:30
		Re: Question about IDL books By: David Fanning on Mon, 06 February 2006 06:21
		Re: Question about IDL books By: Peter Clinch on Mon, 06 February 2006 02:03
		Re: Question about IDL books By: David Fanning on Sun, 05 February 2006 13:52
		Re: Question about IDL books By: David Fanning on Sun, 05 February 2006 13:40
		Re: Question about IDL books By: pimpk24 on Sun, 05 February 2006 13:18
		Re: Question about IDL books By: David Fanning on Sun, 05 February 2006 12:01

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