| Re: Migrate away from idl? [message #68854 is a reply to message #68681] |
Mon, 23 November 2009 08:23  |
lecacheux.alain
Messages: 325
Registered: January 2008
|
Senior Member |
|
|
I am a little bit surprised by the lack of enthousiasm of many of you
regarding current IDL.
I am a French astronomer and use IDL since v2.0 (introduced to me, in
the mid 80s, by a visiting colleague from Colorado University). Since
then, IDL has taken over all other programming languages that I was
using (except in a few cases dealing with instrumentation or real time
programming).
Main advantadge of IDL, in my opinion, is that it can adapt very well
to very different programming situations: for quickly examining a
short subset of data, just as well as for developping large data
processing applications. But in the latter case, the executable code
can also be made quite efficient (even when compared to compiled C,
etc...) so long as you know how should be manipulated 'histogram',
'value_locate', 'where' and other ([array1])[array2] nice (but a bit
criptyc) IDL constructs.
With IDL, you can easily open any kind of file (of any format and/or
huge size), apply to data nearly any kind of scientific processing
(linking with external libraries is not very difficult) and produce
quite nice plots of publishable graphic quality, especially when using
'object graphics'. The general OO implementation is not perfect, but
is sufficient for nearly all purposes. 'Bridges' from and to other
environments are quite useful. IDL license is expensive but there is
the VM, which allow IDL executables to be run for free. Finally, a
rich library of nice user contributions is available.
So, what is the problem ?
I must admit that I would have expected to find, in the last few
years, more appealing novelties than ITools and the Workbench. The
ITools are not really helpful to me (and, I guess, to many, except for
learning how object graphics subtilities can be circumvented). And the
Workbench has disappointed many (or every ?) Windows user, and maybe
still contains bugs (or weaknesses, like the sudden breakpoint
inactivity, pointed out by David).
However, IDL has some firm basis and still appears to be a solid
construct for scientists. I am afraid that many of us might be leaving
IDL, being appealed by more recent and seducting tools, whose future
is, in my opinion, not really guaranteed.
Alx.
|
|
|
|
comp.lang.idl-pvwave archive
Members
Search
Help
Login
Home
