new subject [Was Re: IDL and ENVI]

Hi Mark,
We are going to take this opportunity to clear some things up about
ncl-talk: who answers questions, how fast are they answered, and what
responsibilities the users have when they write to the forum. We'll get
to how you you were treated at the end of this email, but first let's
talk about ncl-talk...

In general, ncl-developers answer a majority of emails, followed by NCAR
scientific folk who are not paid by the NCL project. Users answer a
number of emails too, and for that we @NCAR are highly appreciative. The
NCAR people associated with NCL (paid and unpaid by the NCL project) try
to answer all emails within 24 hours during the week. This is true most
of the time. Various people answer questions at various times as their
work time allows. This means that questions are not necessarily answered
in the order they were asked, but we strive for all questions to be
answered... I am unaware of any other processing languages that offer
this level of support, paid or unpaid.

When a user posts a question about scripting to NCL talk, it is always
helpful if a script and/or plot (png/gif) is included, along with any
error messages you are recieving, your data file (if small), your system
information, and of course a description of the problem. It really helps
the community debug your situation if you have pared down your script to
the exact problem, give us a small data file, and let us run things
locally. Sometimes, this isn't possible, which we understand. But a
clean and easy to run script helps immensely.

Now, talking real world: If a ncl-talk query comes in that no-one knows
the immediate answer to, or that seems that it would take a good deal of
time to solve, or if it seems like the user has not put much effort in
(whether it's a lack of debugging effort or they send their 1000 line
script with very little description included), well, responses will
typically take a while longer. That's a fact. If a user wants a
question about script errors to be answered sooner rather than later
make it easy on the person who is doing the answering.

For the most part, ncl-talk works quite well. Users seem to be quite
happy with the effort, and those of us who typically answer really enjoy
helping other people out. We are always happy to hear about suggestions,
and when we do we typically get back right away to the person who
offered it up.

With regards to how you have been treated, we looked back at the emails
you have written to ncl-talk in the past year.. Here is what we see:
Original message 9/15/11 12:19pm
--- Answer @3:55pm, 5:08pm. Follow on answers next day at 11:15, 11:27

Original message 6/11 11:43am, follow on email same day @1:02pm, asking
for help.
--- Both queries answered @1:24pm same day, with additional coding help
sent @3:53pm the same day

Message sent 6/12 @2:05pm, different subject
--- Answer @3:03pm (within a hour)

Message sent 6/13 @10:52am
--- Answer @11:22am (within a 1/2hour)

Message sent 6/25 4:30pm
--- Answer 4:52pm (within a 1/2 hour)

Message sent 6/25 5:04pm, with additional follow on emails requesting
assistance @5:30pm, 6/26 8:37am, 8:44am, and 3:37pm
--- Message sent from NCAR @3:45 asking you to not repeat email
messages. (We'll get back to this in a second), which you forwarded to all.

Messages sent @4:14, 4:15 stating that "NCAR staff really rude", that as
you are a tax payer we should answer your queries, etc....

--- Email sent to you offline @4:50 from ncl-developer offering further
assistance, which you never responded to.

Message sent @7:14pm stating that we should pay you to use our software
and that we treat your poorly, again forwarding on personal email to
ncl-talk for all to see. Message sent @8:57pm asking whether you should
use ENVI or IDL instead of NCL.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Within the last 1.5 days you sent 10 emails to ncl-talk within roughly
24 hours. *This type of behavior leads people to unsubscribe from
ncl-talk, and/or to send emails to NCAR asking us to curtail the
individual from posting to ncl-talk.* The email that was written to you
was sent offline @3:45 so as to not embarrass you, and was simply asking
you to not resend emails to ncl-talk so that the ncl-community would not
get irritated.

Looking back, almost every time you have written to ncl-talk you were
answered within 2 hours, with most replies coming within 4 hours.
Frequently a core-NCL developer answered your emails. This type of
customer support is unheard of when it comes to programming languages,
never mind that NCL is free.

The email that you sent @5pm on Monday was not answered by 3:45 the next
day, but it was within the 24hr period that we strive for. We were
evacuated @3:45 yesterday due to a wildfire, which precluded staff from
looking into your issue..

Based on all of the above, we believe you have been treated more than
fairly, and were anxiously over posting to ncl-talk yesterday which lead
to people putting off answering you until the late afternoon. We
understand that your problem was vexing, and quite frustrating, but
sometimes one has to be patient.

You are obviously free to try other programming languages. From a very
general point of view, NCL (free) and IDL ($) are typically viewed as
the overall best, matlab has a plethora of mathematical functions that
are easy to use, and GrADS, ferret, and others have plenty of great
things about them that users love. But NCL's user-support is considered
top notch, and we doubt you will find things to be any better with the
languages listed above.

We hope you continue to use NCL, and we will continue to support you, as
time/jobs allow.
Best regards,
The NCL team

On 6/26/12 8:57 PM, mark vogel wrote:
> Hi All
> Have anyone use IDL or ENVI to plot netcdf or hdf5?
> Are they a good software and easier to use?
> Is it better than ncl?
> Thanks
> Mark
>
>
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Received on Wed Jun 27 13:30:14 2012