An update on Craig's single-handed attempt to woo the Solar people away
from IDL...
--
Tim Jenness
JAC software
http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/~timj
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 11:05:24 -0600
From: Craig DeForest <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: PDL-P: Newer "complete" distro, and AAS/SPD report
I was pretty hectic 10 days ago, getting ready for the AAS Solar Physics
Division meeting, so I didn't give a proper report. Based on debugging
input from several scientists, I reworked the instructions and added a couple
of modules to the 2.4.0 "complete" iso, which I'll try to get up on the
web pages sometime this week.
I printed up 50 2.4.0-complete CDs with nice labels for the AAS/SPD
meeting in Laurel, MD last week, and passed them out. There was
considerable interest in the code at the National Solar Observatory
and at several universities, so I anticipate perhaps 10 new active
installations to come out of that.
I found that the distribution CD, together with a working installation
on my laptop, made a great outreach tool. The CD made a nice token
that folks could come up and ask for, and of course running "demo pdl"
and such on the laptop convinced folks that it worked. It helped that
I presented my scientific results on the first day (discovery of
"ultrasound" in the solar atmosphere), and announced that IDL was not
used at all in the data analysis.
I encourage everyone to bring CDs and hand them out at meetings. I'll
also be posting the CD label design that I used (just a map of the
Earth with some text over it), so you can press your own! It took about
90 minutes to run off 50 CDs in my ordinary 8x writer -- they're only
40 MB apiece.
Several of the folks at the meeting had at least tried Numerical
Python and Octave, and the gist of their reports was that neither one
really has the tools (yet) that one needs to start doing routine
analysis with them. In this respect perl/PDL really shines: we've been
pretty good at putting together the sorts of tools that people will
actually need.
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