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Re: Undocumented functions in IDL [message #83345]

Fri, 01 March 2013 06:08

David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001

Senior Member

timothyja123@gmail.com writes:

> I have to disagree entirely. I hear the I dont care about how it works I just want to get the job done over and over from scientists I work with. The problem is they end up writing code that takes them longer to finish then is almost impossible to maintain. I would hardly call that a triumph. When I'm asked to do something they are often amazed at how fast I can accomplish it. My problem is not with IDL itself its that SOME of the people that use it as wasting more time
trying to work on maintaining horrible code than investing the small amount of time to learn how to do things properly to begin with.

I'm just saying that as someone who has spent my entire career trying
(and mostly failing) to get scientists to write more elegant and
maintainable IDL programs I am beginning to appreciate, as my career
winds down, why this quest was so very, very hard. At the end of the
day, whether an IDL program is fast or elegant matters much less then
either you or I wish it would. What matters is whether a Ph.D. was
earned, a scientific result arrived at, a paper written, a career
advanced. Who cares in the end how much time was saved or wasted? It is
all part of the work we do.

Sure, choose 10 IDL programs at random and 9 of them will be awful. But,
almost every one of them will work and get the job done. (Although, God
knows, I often wonder how.) I'm probably going soft in the head. After
so many years spent engaging the enemy at every turn, I'm beginning to
feel friendly towards him, starting to appreciate his ferocious skills.

Let's just say it makes me hopeful that you "disagree entirely," since
then the fight will go on and maybe there will be a few more well-
written and elegant IDL programs in the world. But, I'm turning my
attention elsewhere. I've other battles to fight. Right now, for
example, I'm trying to get my ultralight backpack under 12 pounds for a
trip of a life-time to the wilds of Patagonia. I'm pretty sure, when I
talk to my grandchildren about my accomplishments later, this trip will
come to mind much sooner (and be a hell of a lot more interesting to
them) than how many wonderful IDL programs I've written. :-)

Cheers,

David

--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.idlcoyote.com/
Sepore ma de ni thue. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")

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[Message index]

		Re: Undocumented functions in IDL By: David Fanning on Fri, 01 March 2013 06:08
		Re: Undocumented functions in IDL By: timothyja123 on Fri, 01 March 2013 03:09
		Re: Undocumented functions in IDL By: David Fanning on Thu, 28 February 2013 21:26
		Re: Undocumented functions in IDL By: timothyja123 on Thu, 28 February 2013 21:03
		Re: Undocumented functions in IDL By: timothyja123 on Thu, 28 February 2013 20:55
		Re: Undocumented functions in IDL By: David Fanning on Thu, 28 February 2013 20:39
		Re: Undocumented functions in IDL By: David Fanning on Thu, 28 February 2013 20:33
		Re: Undocumented functions in IDL By: wlandsman on Thu, 28 February 2013 20:30
		Re: Undocumented functions in IDL By: timothyja123 on Thu, 28 February 2013 19:52
		Re: Undocumented functions in IDL By: Craig Markwardt on Fri, 01 March 2013 07:43

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