| Re: CDAT [message #68296 is a reply to message #68293] |
Tue, 13 October 2009 13:43  |
David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001
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Senior Member |
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Paolo writes:
> Hi all - in the September 1, 2009 edition of EOS, the American
> Geophysical Union (AGU) journal, an article presented software
> called "climate data analysis tools" (CDAT) - written in *python*.
>
> That inspired a few questions to me...
>
> Is the climate community running away from IDL/ENVI?
> Or did they never cared much for it anyway? (I am not that
> familiar with the field myself).
> A sign of things to come? Will other disciplines follow?
The climate community is similar to a lot of other science
communities: they like cheap (read "free") software that
they can waste hours and hours of graduate student time
on to make a simple plot. Having worked in such a community
for some time now, I am more sympathetic than I used to be.
There are LOTS of good, free software programs out there
(proj4 map projections, ImageMagick, etc.) and we should
take advantage of them.
The alternative, of course, is to pay big bucks for
commercial software that does (much of the time) save
you time and money because it actually works. The downside
is having to come up with increasingly scarce maintenance
dollars for more geegaws you will probably never use. :-(
Personally, IDL is not the be-all and end-all it used to
be for me. But it is still, at its core, a damn fine piece
of software for doing climate or any other kind of science.
Cheers,
David
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