Re: Was: Curious... Now: What will IDL be like

["Hugh D. R. Evans" <hevans(at)wm.estec.esa.nl>]

"H C Pumphrey" <hcp@newsread.ed.ac.uk> wrote in message
8rf4ot$n40$1@scotsman.ed.ac.uk">news:8rf4ot$n40$1@scotsman.ed.ac.uk...
> In article <8reodd$dro$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, Andrew <noymer@my-deja.com>
writes:
> |> don't want to go through the same with R/Gauss/MATLAB/Octave/Yorick/
> |> S-plus/fooware unless I have to.
>
> Well, now:
>
> with MATLAB and S-plus you'll pay more money
> with R and S-Plus you'll have trouble reading in your non-ascii data
> with MATLAB and Octave you'll find 3-D arrays don't exist.
> with Octave, you'll find the graphics suck
> with Yorick, you'll find the structures inflexible


Of course there is the PVWave option. The primary problems (we run both Wave
and IDL here) I've discovered is the seemingly small divergence of the
languages, i.e. the basics are the same but all the add ons (widgets,
mapping, objects, new device drivers, etc.) have changed. So it seems to
work initially, but then you end up hunting through the code for that one
line that is specific to the one or the other.

As to which is better, depends on what you want to do. But given the worries
about IDL being shelved, there is another, not too dissimilar, option.

Regards,
Hugh