[vtkusers] IDL or, preaching VTK to the nonconverted

[Joey Mukherjee]

We use IDL in this dept. a great deal, although I personally have never 
used it.

One of the nicest things about IDL is the simplicity of the language to 
do fairly complex stuff.  Working with matrices, arrays, etc.  Its 
makes certain things easy, and other things impossible.  With VTK, 
everything is possible, just hard.

Anyway, if you already have "real" programmers, VTK will let you do 
more stuff.  If you have people who may not have real skill in software 
like scientists or whatever, I bet they would be faster in IDL.  IDL is 
fairly expensive, but so are labor costs.  Its really a judgment call.

If I were making the case for VTK, the only point I could really see is 
the power to do stuff that IDL couldn't dream of doing.  Good luck!

On May 19, 2004, at 1:39 PM, Sean McInerney wrote:

> Hi All,
>
>   Does anyone with past or current experience with IDL have any 
> insight into its comparison with VTK ... that they wouldn't mind 
> sharing? Beyond being commercial and old/mature, are there any big 
> points making the case for VTK over IDL in implementing a 3D 
> visualization system (that will do a fair bit of image processing)?
>
> -Sean
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Joey