Re: Impressions on IDL for Macintosh?

[Pavel Romashkin <promashkin(at)cmdl.noaa.gov>]

I am using IDL mainly on a Mac (G4), and have been using it on a PPC for
2 years. Other platform I use and like is Windows, but the speed of IDL
(even 5.3, non-vectorized for Motorola's chip in newer Macs) is so
impressive on G4 that I am beginning to like it better than Windows. I
also used IDL on HP Unix, but Mac became so much faster that I use HP
now to only test widget interfaces on Unix platform. OpenGL rendering is
faster on the Mac than on software-based on PC or HP (well, PC is not
top of the line anymore). I like user interface of the Mac version
better, as it allows to have windows piled up without limiting them to
the outer borders of the main development environment window, like
Windows do.
I found no major bugs in Mac version. One annoying thing is that
variable watch window often displays wrong values, which may be
confusing if you are trying to debug using variable watch window. I am
used to print variables out, which, of course, displays the right
values. Also, indescreet (read: almost any involving pointers, complex
data structures or objects) use of variable watch window causes my IDL
to die. But this is minor in my opinion. Just dont over-click in that
window. I never even looked at memory allocation, because the puny 256
mb I have in G4 handle what I run just fine. Overall, now I like
Mac-based IDL better than any other flavor.
This impression was influenced a lot by the new machine and OS9. After I
figured out why in the world the OS would crash so often, it runs rock
solid for days and runs fast. Overall, I recommend G4+IDL combo to
anyone who likes easy interface, nice options (just check out the Tips
sections for many, many widgets or features in "Whats new in 5.3" book -
many nice tips are Mac only) and fast execution. If you read my earlier
posts, you'd notice I was 100% PC proponent. Until I got G4 and played
with OS to make it run reliably :-)
Cheers,
Pavel

Bernard wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I am currently evaluating IDL 5.3 for Macintosh and considering buying a
> licence. Up to now I have encountered quite a number of bugs (some of
> them cosmetic, others functional). I would be grateful to other Mac
> users if they could share their impression on the software to help me
> make up my mind.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Bernard.
> 
> email: remove YYY from above address.