[OSGeo-Edu] Programming Languages

[Tim Michelsen]

Hello,
today I discovered the wiki page on programming languages.

Very interesting because one can see that having some basic or advanced
programming/scripting skills is essential nowdaways for many job offers
in geoscience and earthscience to be able to handle large datasets and
geoinformation.

One has to bear in mind that most geoscientists, ecologists, biologists,
etc. do gerally not attend courses in programming. They may not be
computer illitrates but often lack the computer science basics...

In most cases programming will not be limited to geoinformation.
Modelling or numerical modeling are also important.

In the (proprietary) commercial world I think IDL is widely used for
numerical task and also (geo-)visualization (together with ENVI).
Fortran and Matlab are the suspects for modelling. Not to mention VBA
and MapObjects...

The above mentioned site states to address the needs of newcomers to the
field or programming - as I am: "This project is intended for
information about and discussion how different programming languages are
used in OSG software and what's available."

To my think it should therefore - instead of being just another software
list - show things like what are good and efficient ways to step into
programming with focus on getdata.

1) Do we have FOSS equivalents of the above mentioned languages?
2) Which programming language should be applied for what?
3) Where shall teachers start when intending a more programming
orientated course?

Related to the other post I recently started and enjoyed discussing (Use
cases for FOSS-GIS in universities -
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gis.osgeo.discuss/1571) I'd like to
stress that besides giving the developer tutorials like the ones for
QGIS (QGIS tutorials in Python - http://blog.qgis.org/?q=node/59) the
enduser needs also a helping hand of those who are already advanced.

If we answer question 1) with yes then we still have the problem that
the FOSS solutions are rather unknown! My university has several copies
of manuals on ArcInfo, ArcMap, IDL, etc. But no single book about FOSS
geo-programming (note that I am not talking of PHP/Mapserver here). As
discussed in the other posts most teachers a) reteach what they know b)
don't take much time and effort to discover something off the track
since they also to their own research, manage the department, etc.

Are there books about that?
On http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Library#GFOSS_Books the only one
addressing these issues may be 2004, Open Source GIS: A GRASS GIS
Approach and Mapping Hacks. The majority of books are now addressed
towards web develment...

What I would like to have like a introduction on FOSS based geo/numeric
programming that we could hand out to our teachers and they just get the
spirit and go on themselves.
The OSGeo Journal has already nice articles. Why not joining the those
experinced teachers who work with FOSS already and pulish a series of
booklets?
Some title ideas: Remote sensing with FOSS tools, Creation of custom
applicataions with FOSS GIS, Modelling with FOSS, ...

What do you think?

Regards,
Tim M.