Modern geospatial analysis can be conducted with the click of a button in any of the easy-to-use commercial or open source geospatial packages. So, why would you want to use a programming language to learn this field? The most important reasons are as follows:
- You want complete control of the underlying algorithms, data, and execution
- You want to automate specific, repetitive analysis tasks with minimal overhead from a large, multipurpose geospatial framework
- You want to create a program that's easy to share
- You want to learn geospatial analysis beyond pushing buttons in software
The geospatial industry is gradually moving away from the traditional workflow, in which teams of analysts use expensive desktop software to produce geospatial products. Geospatial analysis is being pushed toward automated processes that reside in the...