| Re: Ranting and Raving and getting back to global variables [message #11550] |
Tue, 21 April 1998 00:00  |
Martin Schultz
Messages: 515
Registered: August 1997
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Senior Member |
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J.D. Smith wrote:
>
> Allow me to elaborate on the situation which would require a more
> flexible mechanism for importing and exporting main level variables.
[...]
Thanks! That makes sense indeed.
> And as for the philosophical question of greater power vs. consolidation
> and organization, I see it as a non-issue. I argue that if the
> introduction of new features and flexibility makes a program less
> accessible, they were not correctly implemented. The common backbone of
> all good programs I've encountered is the hierarchical organization of
> functionality: a gentle learning curve whose gentleness nonetheless
> does not impose arbitrary limits on how high the curve goes. I realize
> this is difficult to implement in the real world, but I don't see this
> as an excuse. Take as an example the IDL Advanced Development tools for
> linking with external programs, and even embedding IDL within a custom
> program. These tools are certainly above the heads of most IDL users
> (including myself, for the most part), but they are eminently useful and
> powerful. Most users, however, can be perfectly productive without
> knowing anything about them.
I certainly agree with you on this. It's just that I seem to know more
people who struggle with the basics in IDL than with other "plotting"
software. So there must be a big step before you can gently ride uphill
on the learning curve. It may be true that one should not temper with
IDL if one is only interested in producing the occasional line graph,
there may be other point-and-click programs which are less frustrating,
but I am convinced that IDL could win many more users if the first steps
were simpler. If David's book became the standard users' manual and all
those "but"s were eliminated (the consolidation) that could greatly
facilitate beginner's access to our favorite software. And although I
easily admit that I probably know less than 20% of IDL's features, I
keep wondering why I have to look up all these !X and !Y tags in the
online help every time I want to produce a plot that looks just a little
different from others. And sometimes it is really hard to find out about
"new" features: unless you know the name of the routine you are looking
for, it can take quite a while before you find it, and if you are not
sure whether it exists, you may give up early.
>
> I believe IDL *should* focus on consolidating and cleaning their
> interface, but I don't think they should delay or inhibit the
> introduction of new features to help achieve this consolidation. As we
> all know, the simplest program is the one which does nothing at all.
>
That may be a matter of resources, too. But you are certainly right: if
there already i ssome code to do what you want, and it's just not
documented and/or accessible, then release of this should certainly not
be delayed. And as I understand David and others, there may be a couple
of things to improve in the OOP part which may be of greater importance
as well.
Regards,
Martin.
PS: BTW: do you have an idea how much the results of your speed survey
could be affected by network speed rather than machine speed? True: not
too many users may sit right at the fancy workstation directly, so the
results may well reflect "wall clock time" in a real environment. But
can one judge the machines from this? Somehow I have a hard time
believing that so many PC's have faster graphics than an SGI
workstation.
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Dr. Martin Schultz
Department for Earth&Planetary Sciences, Harvard University
186 Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA-02138, USA
phone: (617)-496-8318
fax : (617)-495-4551
e-mail: mgs@io.harvard.edu
IDL-homepage: http://www-as.harvard.edu/people/staff/mgs/idl/
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