Is GIS Heavy?
The other day I posted about using Turf.js to perform some simple GIS processes. The venerable Brian Timoney made note of it.
https://twitter.com/briantimoney/status/634078615500517376
I hadn’t really thought of the article in that context, I was just looking at a quick way to turn a CSV into a GeoJSON file quickly. But let’s look at Brian’s point, is desktop GIS heavy?
Esri_logo.svg
I’ve maintained since Esri abandoned ArcInfo Workstation in the early 2000s, GIS has become difficult to use. Not in the sense that any idiot1 can click the next button, but the simple fact they have no idea what they’re doing. To accomplish this, Esri spent tons of R&D to make GIS as simple as drag a couple of layers to a dialog and just click next until you have an output. You don’t even need to understand the setting, they default pretty much out of the box. Setting fuzzy tolerance? Not a problem, it’s labeled as optional. The need to understand why you are performing analysis is not needed.
Now that isn’t to say Esri is doing something bad. They’re simplifying something that was very scientific and required understanding of FORTRAN or UNIX into something that almost anyone can do. I think at some level they should be commended for making GIS easier and not limited to a bunch of weirdos with Sun SPARCstation 20 workstations. But in doing so they turned something lightweight into something of a beast. Thus Brian’s heavy comment.
But that’s not the end to the story, at least from an Esri perspective. Esri at the same time they were throwing wizards in from of every tool in ArcGIS Desktop, created one of the most powerful GIS libraries ever created, ArcPy. It’s everything we wanted ArcInfo Workstation to become, a modern, no proprietary scripting language with tons of GIS analysis tools. But for some reason, Esri doesn’t highlight it as they should. Just go to Esri.com and search for ArcPy. Typical Esri results, it’s a mess. Brian is reading this now nodding, “GIS is heavy”.
My example using Turf.js could have as easily been done with a simple Python script as it could have been done with Turf.js. I just chose JavaScript because I was in a mood I suppose. But the process of creating a script in ArcPy isn’t much more complicated2. Is ArcPy “desktop GIS”? I would say so as you get it when you install ArcGIS Desktop. But it isn’t heavy, you can create Python in notepad.exe and run from the command line. Or as most are now preferring, use Visual Studio 2015.
Heavy GIS is starting up ArcMap, starting up ArcCatalog, dragging and dropping into a wizard, and fighting through the next screens. The process is similar in QGIS which seems to be adopting some of the same wizard dialogs as ArcGIS. They’re heavy because that’s what they need to be. Scott Morehouse years ago told me ArcGIS was complicated because it is “scientific software”. At the time I laughed but I do get it. It’s the long tail of long tails in GIS, solving GIS analysis in so many edge cases that it gets bloated.
Esri should3 have a section of their website devoted to Python scripting. Showing how much easier (and faster) it is to do your analysis with ArcPy over ArcGIS Toolbox4. There are pieces all over their website about Python and ArcGIS, but “Scripting” section. That would go a long way to making Desktop GIS not heavy. Searching Google for “Esri Scripting” gives you a dead-end to ArcScripts. That should change.
Hangouts with James Fee Season 4 is Arriving Soon. I Need Your Help!
Since I’ve decided to break Hangouts with James Fee into Spring and Fall “seasons” (sounds official doesn’t it?) the summer has been left to swimming and vacations. But with Fall around the corner (temps in Tempe have dropped back down below 110F), it’s time to get serious about scheduling the next batch of hangouts. I asked for feedback from people last season and it was a great help. For the fall though I’d love to interview people who haven’t been on the show before or are not as well-known. If you can email me with suggestions (heck include yourself if you want) I’d really appreciate it. My favorite Hangout from last spring was with Lyzi Diamond and I’d love to have more like that.
Hangouts with James Fee Season 4 is Arriving Soon. I Need Your Help!
Since I’ve decided to break Hangouts with James Fee into Spring and Fall “seasons” (sounds official doesn’t it?) the summer has been left to swimming and vacations. But with Fall around the corner (temps in Tempe have dropped back down below 110F), it’s time to get serious about scheduling the next batch of hangouts. I asked for feedback from people last season and it was a great help. For the fall though I’d love to interview people who haven’t been on the show before or are not as well-known. If you can email me with suggestions (heck include yourself if you want) I’d really appreciate it. My favorite Hangout from last spring was with Lyzi Diamond and I’d love to have more like that.
Minecraft, Second Life and Google Earth
This hilarious article on abandoned Universities in Second Life got me thinking about 3D worlds and GIS.
Colleges were among those that bought the hype of the Linden Lab-developed virtual world. Many universities set up their own private islands to engage students; some even held classes within Second Life.
Most of these virtual universities are gone –– it costs almost $300 per month to host your own island –– but it turns out a handful remain as ghost towns. I decided to travel through several of the campuses, to see what’s happening in Second Life college-world in 2015
I mean seriously, what the heck were we thinking with Second Life? But while Second Life was more hype than function, KML and Google Earth was our great hope. KML export, Arc2Earth, SketchUp all were tools that were used liberally to export our GIS models to Google Earth in hopes we’d finally have a universal GIS viewer. My site is littered with KML export articles that we all thought would change our lives. But honestly none of them really have taken off. In fact I rarely create KML anymore, my clients just doesn’t use Google Earth anymore.
So where is Minecraft in all of this? Safe Software has an Minecraft conversation as part of FME. If I look at the analytics to this site, most of the top 10 search terms have some tie in to Minecraft. But it feels so much different from Second Life or even Google Earth. I honestly have put some thought into licensing FME and putting up a GIS to Minecraft conversion service due to the interest in it.
But are we exporting GIS to Minecraft for visualization? No but I think there is a different thing going on here. Minecraft is as consumer as we get. GIS is very enterprise and business focused. We’ve always wondered how do we get ordinary people to use GIS data1. What Minecraft does is bring all that analysis, data conversion, transformation and scripting into the mainstream. I can’t recall my son ever being so interested in anything as he is in Minecraft. I’m sure your kids are the same way.
I’m still not really sure if Minecraft GIS is has any more traction than Second Life or KML for GIS professionals. It could very well be that in 3 years I’ll look back on this post and laugh at my words. But I’m betting that Microsoft will make Minecraft bigger than it’s ever been and Minecraft export format will be built into every GIS package.
- Well other than to find a Starbucks ↩︎
Minecraft, Second Life and Google Earth
This hilarious article on abandoned Universities in Second Life got me thinking about 3D worlds and GIS.
Colleges were among those that bought the hype of the Linden Lab-developed virtual world. Many universities set up their own private islands to engage students; some even held classes within Second Life.
Most of these virtual universities are gone –– it costs almost $300 per month to host your own island –– but it turns out a handful remain as ghost towns. I decided to travel through several of the campuses, to see what’s happening in Second Life college-world in 2015
I mean seriously, what the heck were we thinking with Second Life? But while Second Life was more hype than function, KML and Google Earth was our great hope. KML export, Arc2Earth, SketchUp all were tools that were used liberally to export our GIS models to Google Earth in hopes we’d finally have a universal GIS viewer. My site is littered with KML export articles that we all thought would change our lives. But honestly none of them really have taken off. In fact I rarely create KML anymore, my clients just doesn’t use Google Earth anymore.
So where is Minecraft in all of this? Safe Software has an Minecraft conversation as part of FME. If I look at the analytics to this site, most of the top 10 search terms have some tie in to Minecraft. But it feels so much different from Second Life or even Google Earth. I honestly have put some thought into licensing FME and putting up a GIS to Minecraft conversion service due to the interest in it.
But are we exporting GIS to Minecraft for visualization? No but I think there is a different thing going on here. Minecraft is as consumer as we get. GIS is very enterprise and business focused. We’ve always wondered how do we get ordinary people to use GIS data1. What Minecraft does is bring all that analysis, data conversion, transformation and scripting into the mainstream. I can’t recall my son ever being so interested in anything as he is in Minecraft. I’m sure your kids are the same way.
I’m still not really sure if Minecraft GIS is has any more traction than Second Life or KML for GIS professionals. It could very well be that in 3 years I’ll look back on this post and laugh at my words. But I’m betting that Microsoft will make Minecraft bigger than it’s ever been and Minecraft export format will be built into every GIS package.
- Well other than to find a Starbucks ↩︎
Simply GIS
I had some endpoints of a lines that I needed to convert to GeoJSON today. Before I started I do what every GIS professional does, take inventory of the multitude of ways to actually accomplish this. I mentally jotted down the following:
- Esri ArcGIS
- QGIS
- Online tools (csv -> json)
- R
- Python
I started to realize that these are all pretty heavy tools to just accomplish something as simple as a line string to line. We literally pull out a chainsaw when all we want it to trim a little piece of paper. Nothing simple about converting some coordinates into JSON. Enter Turf.js.
turf.linestring - Creates a LineString based on a coordinate array. Properties can be added optionally.
https://gist.github.com/cageyjames/400f050b24db613f83a3.js
So simple, plus it’s JavaScript already. Honestly I need to keep coming back to Turf.js, the docs cover easily 90% of what we mostly do with GIS every day. I just run Turf.js on my laptop and now I don’t even have to open up QGIS to get my work done. The best part, all JavaScript! So who is writing the Turf.js book right now?