Re: idl2matlab translate-o-matic

["tb" <tbowers(at)nrlssc.navy.mil>]

"Craig Markwardt" <craigmnet@cow.physics.wisc.edu> wrote in message
>
> Forgive him, he knows not what he says.
>
[Snip good talk on why you need stuff that alot of people
always seem to ask, "Why do you need that stuff?"]

Dammit! You beat me to it!
For that matter Craig, why do we need objects? I can do everything
with structures and functions that I can do with objects without
having to learn about all those confusing method thingys, can't I?;)

I've seen both, but *really* never used Matlab (i.e. I've just
tooled around with it a bit to see what it's like). David is
right on the mark. EVERY graduate science student I know is at
least familiar with Matlab, and it definately seems to be a "stronger"
mathmatics application. IDL? Well, it's definately better for app
development in my (not particularly special) opinion (see David's
synopsis from earlier post). And that didn't really happen 'till object
graphics. But... It does have one major drawback, compiling to a standalone
executable. So, *is* this a better app development environment?

If Matlab had the object graphics capability that IDL has, I'd be
posting this on comp.soft-sys.matlab almost specifically for the reason
that it can compile. IDL looks like it wants to be a major player in
scientific software development. Then do it! If you would create true
apps, then probably my whole office would be using IDL. The guy in the
office next to mine writes code in pascal (yep, you heard me, Borland's
Delphi pascal IDE). It takes him just a bit longer, but damn it chaps
my IDLgrSurface to see him compile to an exe that runs 20x faster than
my IDL sloth, AND he just pops it on a floppy when he has to take off
to a conference to show his stuff.

Matlab is a good product, and always getting better.
IDL is a good product, and always getting better.
If IDL wants to be *the* scientific software development leader, then it
first needs to be a true application development environment.

==END OF RANT==
tb