GNU Data Language • Hacker News Board

Re: GNU Data Language

#31

Post by trailbits » Sun, May 15, 2022, 11:53 PM UTC

necubi wrote: post #26

wyldfire wrote: post #21

It's funny for me to see all these references to 'IDL' describing "Interactive Data Language". I had only associated the term IDL with 'Interface Definition Language' [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_description_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDL_(programming_language) is the one you're looking for :) It's a popular (and frankly terrible) language used in astronomy and astrophysics. My first (semi-professional) programming job was a high school internship at NASA AMES writing IDL to process data from the Cassini probe orbiting Saturn. At that time you had to use a clunky IDE for development and the whole toolchain was proprie…

You never had to use their IDE, and in fact the IDE didn't exist for the first 20 years or so. Being an interpretive language, no toolchain involved. You just write code in any editor and run the IDL interpreter, just as you do with perl or python. Code libraries were discovered via your IDL_PATH environment, similar to how perl and python work.

Re: GNU Data Language

#32

Post by mro_name » Mon, May 16, 2022, 6:18 AM UTC

mcluck wrote: post #16

I've said it before and I'll say it a thousand times more: when showing a language... Show. Me. The Code. I had to click through 5(!) links before I saw any code and those links were not terribly intuitive. No "getting started", no "tutorial", nothing. It seems like an interesting language but it baffles me how many language designers and implementers seem to hide the very code that they aim to use. Here is the first…

yes, prose for the enlightened. That annoys me, unenlightened as I am, and keeps me out.

Re: GNU Data Language

#33

Post by tetris11 » Mon, May 16, 2022, 6:37 AM UTC

nurettin wrote: post #14

I worked with IDL 20 years ago. GDL at the time was somewhat different and the difference was great enough to prevent me from doing the entire thing in GDL. Great to see they made the move to be compatible with IDL. It has a great REPL. Easy to program. Could have been the python we never knew we wanted.

I used it once for processing matrices (~20ya). I was very new to programming, and it completely threw me off as I wasn't prepared for a lot of its concepts.

Re: GNU Data Language

#34

Post by mcluck » Tue, May 17, 2022, 3:38 PM UTC

jhgb wrote: post #30

mcluck wrote: post #16

I've said it before and I'll say it a thousand times more: when showing a language... Show. Me. The Code. I had to click through 5(!) links before I saw any code and those links were not terribly intuitive. No "getting started", no "tutorial", nothing. It seems like an interesting language but it baffles me how many language designers and implementers seem to hide the very code that they aim to use. Here is the first…

Is it really a language, though? It seems simply like an implementation of an existing language. If I make a new C compiler, you probably won't ask me for example inputs for it.

Yes but if you go to the website for the original language then 5 links shrinks to 4. That's still 4 too many