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[Emile van Sebille]

"byron okubasu anangwe" <okubasu at eudoramail.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.1000385776.27609.python-list at python.org...
> Hello,
>           I am a Land Surveying student at the Kenya Polytechnic. I came
across your website from a link from www.remotesensing.org and I was very
interested.
>           I am currently undertaking a project in geodesy where I am to
develop a program to convert geodetic co-ordinates (longitude, latitude and
altitude) to plane co-ordinates (X, Y and height) and vice-versa.

This sounds straight forward as a first project.  I imagine if you want to
do all sorts of GUI stuff and you're not already up on GUI that it would be
harder.

As a simple conversion example, these functions convert between centigrade
and farenheit:

def ctof (c):
    return c*9./5 +32

def ftoc (f):
    return (f-32)*5./9

> What I would like to know is: -
>  How much time is it going to take to learn python with experience
of programming in BASIC and FOTRAN?

Learning python - about a day.  Learning the library - quite a bit longer,
although for what you're doing, you won't need much of it.  Work through the
tutorial first: http://www.python.org/doc/current/tut/tut.html

>  Can python support scientific and mathematical computations such
as iterations, obtaining values of a particular item from list of a
predefined set to use in an equation?

Yes.  Check out dictionaries.

>  What problems would I be likely to encounter?

Not many, if any.  When you run into a problem, ask in the group and you'll
get good advice.

HTH,



--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

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