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(Full disclosure -- I ( User:Mpiper) am an RSI employee.) The phrase "IDL's market share has been recently decreasing considerably" in the second sentence isn't true. I don't want to change it, though, because it could be seen as a conflict of interest. I think a less strongly worded statement, or a deletion, would be more appropriate. — Preceding undated comment added 21:41, 10 March 2005
I modified the statement about loop speed: if I understand correctly, IDL loops are implemented in C and therefore can't be faster than a well-designed loop in C -- they can at most run as fast as such a thing. That is true of modern vectorized languages in general, including IDL, GDL, Matlab, Octave, Python, and Perl. zowie 19:10, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
I won't mess with it, but I'm not entirely sure what the appropriate way to write the "Problems" section is, and I'm not especially happy with the way it is now -- several "example problems" have been named, and solutions to them have been posted, but (in my experience anyway) the main problem is one that infects a great deal of late-model software: backward compatibility enshrines earlier mistakes. In the case of IDL, this adds up to a lot of "solutions" that the programmer must remember, and that tend to crowd out real design. I certainly don't want this to become a battleground page -- languages in particular are fodder for unproductive flame wars -- but I don't think that the Problems section does anything useful the way it stands now. It should either be augmented (by someone other than me -- I'm probably too partisan, as a quick google for "zowie IDL" will reveal) or deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by zowie ( talk • contribs) 00:19, 5 May 2005
( Niel Malan)I have a problem with the "Feature" "has all function arguments passed by reference ("IN-OUT")". Certainly IDL passes variables by reference, but indexed variables are passed by value. And what is "IN-OUT" supposed to mean? — Preceding undated comment added 01:30, 21 August 2005
MSchienle ( talk) 03:15, 24 March 2020 (UTC) First time I've seen this article on Wikipedia, but noticed my name (Mike Schienle) mentioned with some original research tags. I'd like to clear up what I can, but I could use some coaching on the approach. Briefly, I started using IDL in 1992. I picked up the IDL FAQ from Ray Sterner in 1997 after he indicated he was interested in passing it along. In 2002, I worked for RSI for about a year on the ENVI project. At that time, I asked that David Stern review the FAQ for accuracy. David Stern indicated he was the source for much of the earlier material provided by Ray Sterner and that it was accurate. I left in 2003 to return to consulting and I haven't had any contact with RSI since then, other than renewing licenses for a couple years. I have not done any IDL work since 2005. So, I'm confident with the accuracy of it due to a direct contact with the source, but have absolutely no documentation to indicate that.
I'm not entirely comfortable with this section as it appears to amalgamate various things into ... well ... problems. Some things here are real problems -- like the fact that a language that counts from zero doesn't allow zero-length arrays. That's a real contradiction. On the other hand the number of bits in an integer is really more a matter of convention - unexpected convention, maybe, but not really a problem. Especially since you can change it if you don't like the default. That kind of thing might go better into a section called "gotchas" or such, that would accumulate ways in which IDL is different from the majority of other language in perhaps unexpected ways, but where the majority way of doing things is really just conventional and there's no particular reason to do it one way or another. IDL's "format" is probably a problem for a C programmer, but will seem natural to someone from the FORTRAN world. On the other hand the fact that IDL will produce a floating error upon almost every math operation leads to people ignoring its errors which seems like a real problem to me. Iron Condor 03:55, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
My limited experience with IDL at the Summer Science Program programing an orbit determination project were not pleasant. I tested out various for and while loops, and the performance was like snot. Java, which runs on a virtual machine was alot faster, (like ten times). Anyway, our version of IDL had a bunch of problems, a really dumb one was the the constant pi, !dpi, was wrong in the seventh decimal place. I don't want to be flaming, but what are your thoughts on all of this? --BorisFromStockdale 07:15, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
"nested arrays (that is, arrays of arrays are not permitted)" -- isn't true. You can easily use a PTRARR for this. 129.137.220.29 ( talk) 17:00, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
IDL> p = ptrarr(5) IDL> p[4] = ptr_new(bytarr(10)) IDL> p[4][5] = 1 p[4][5] = 1 ^ % Syntax error. IDL> (*p[4])[5] = 1
Should the proper title of this article (the page name) be IDL (programming language) (as it is now), or Interactive Data Language (which is presently a redirect to IDL (programming language)). It seems to me, that per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (abbreviations), the spelled out form should be preferred. This also has the benefit of being unambiguous, and thus avoiding the need for the parenthetical qualification. Should the page be moved ("renamed")? — DragonHawk ( talk| hist) 02:47, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I was wondering if someone could add the years for the different versions. It also might be helpful to include the innovations included with each new major version. JKeck ( talk) 15:40, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
IDL (programming language) article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||
|
(Full disclosure -- I ( User:Mpiper) am an RSI employee.) The phrase "IDL's market share has been recently decreasing considerably" in the second sentence isn't true. I don't want to change it, though, because it could be seen as a conflict of interest. I think a less strongly worded statement, or a deletion, would be more appropriate. — Preceding undated comment added 21:41, 10 March 2005
I modified the statement about loop speed: if I understand correctly, IDL loops are implemented in C and therefore can't be faster than a well-designed loop in C -- they can at most run as fast as such a thing. That is true of modern vectorized languages in general, including IDL, GDL, Matlab, Octave, Python, and Perl. zowie 19:10, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
I won't mess with it, but I'm not entirely sure what the appropriate way to write the "Problems" section is, and I'm not especially happy with the way it is now -- several "example problems" have been named, and solutions to them have been posted, but (in my experience anyway) the main problem is one that infects a great deal of late-model software: backward compatibility enshrines earlier mistakes. In the case of IDL, this adds up to a lot of "solutions" that the programmer must remember, and that tend to crowd out real design. I certainly don't want this to become a battleground page -- languages in particular are fodder for unproductive flame wars -- but I don't think that the Problems section does anything useful the way it stands now. It should either be augmented (by someone other than me -- I'm probably too partisan, as a quick google for "zowie IDL" will reveal) or deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by zowie ( talk • contribs) 00:19, 5 May 2005
( Niel Malan)I have a problem with the "Feature" "has all function arguments passed by reference ("IN-OUT")". Certainly IDL passes variables by reference, but indexed variables are passed by value. And what is "IN-OUT" supposed to mean? — Preceding undated comment added 01:30, 21 August 2005
MSchienle ( talk) 03:15, 24 March 2020 (UTC) First time I've seen this article on Wikipedia, but noticed my name (Mike Schienle) mentioned with some original research tags. I'd like to clear up what I can, but I could use some coaching on the approach. Briefly, I started using IDL in 1992. I picked up the IDL FAQ from Ray Sterner in 1997 after he indicated he was interested in passing it along. In 2002, I worked for RSI for about a year on the ENVI project. At that time, I asked that David Stern review the FAQ for accuracy. David Stern indicated he was the source for much of the earlier material provided by Ray Sterner and that it was accurate. I left in 2003 to return to consulting and I haven't had any contact with RSI since then, other than renewing licenses for a couple years. I have not done any IDL work since 2005. So, I'm confident with the accuracy of it due to a direct contact with the source, but have absolutely no documentation to indicate that.
I'm not entirely comfortable with this section as it appears to amalgamate various things into ... well ... problems. Some things here are real problems -- like the fact that a language that counts from zero doesn't allow zero-length arrays. That's a real contradiction. On the other hand the number of bits in an integer is really more a matter of convention - unexpected convention, maybe, but not really a problem. Especially since you can change it if you don't like the default. That kind of thing might go better into a section called "gotchas" or such, that would accumulate ways in which IDL is different from the majority of other language in perhaps unexpected ways, but where the majority way of doing things is really just conventional and there's no particular reason to do it one way or another. IDL's "format" is probably a problem for a C programmer, but will seem natural to someone from the FORTRAN world. On the other hand the fact that IDL will produce a floating error upon almost every math operation leads to people ignoring its errors which seems like a real problem to me. Iron Condor 03:55, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
My limited experience with IDL at the Summer Science Program programing an orbit determination project were not pleasant. I tested out various for and while loops, and the performance was like snot. Java, which runs on a virtual machine was alot faster, (like ten times). Anyway, our version of IDL had a bunch of problems, a really dumb one was the the constant pi, !dpi, was wrong in the seventh decimal place. I don't want to be flaming, but what are your thoughts on all of this? --BorisFromStockdale 07:15, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
"nested arrays (that is, arrays of arrays are not permitted)" -- isn't true. You can easily use a PTRARR for this. 129.137.220.29 ( talk) 17:00, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
IDL> p = ptrarr(5) IDL> p[4] = ptr_new(bytarr(10)) IDL> p[4][5] = 1 p[4][5] = 1 ^ % Syntax error. IDL> (*p[4])[5] = 1
Should the proper title of this article (the page name) be IDL (programming language) (as it is now), or Interactive Data Language (which is presently a redirect to IDL (programming language)). It seems to me, that per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (abbreviations), the spelled out form should be preferred. This also has the benefit of being unambiguous, and thus avoiding the need for the parenthetical qualification. Should the page be moved ("renamed")? — DragonHawk ( talk| hist) 02:47, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I was wondering if someone could add the years for the different versions. It also might be helpful to include the innovations included with each new major version. JKeck ( talk) 15:40, 13 April 2021 (UTC)