Question:
I am a research assistant in astrophysics. I am just trying to get my
foot in the door. Right now I am trying to learn IDL. It's not so
hard
to learn, the trick is getting IDL programming opportunities so I can
legitimately put it on my resume. Does anybody here have any ideas for
obtaining IDL volunteer task opportunites?
Answer:
I used IDL and I wasn't particularly impressed with it. I'm not sure
how much it's used.
In my experience, there's a greater demand for people with experience
with Matlab. It was used in several courses by the department where I
did my Ph. D. There's an open-source language similar to that called
Octave available. Since Matlab is expensive to buy, Octave might be the
best alternative though it might have a few quirks.
