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This introductory module shows you how to use a browser / cloud-based integrated development environment (IDE) as a powerful sandbox tool for geospatial applications and spatial engineering.
Put another way, you’re going to learn how you can cut some super helpful code or just some code snippets from any computer or device with an internet connection.
The browser-based service we’re going to use is called repl.it. We’re going to work in C++. And we’re going to beef it up with a C++ library called Eigen for linear algebra, vectors, and matrices …
You can develop some sophisticated stuff in such an environment – it can use pretty much any modern programming language and there are no specific limits to what you can do in a spatial or geomatics context. But for now, our focus is going to be on adding the tool to your own personal sandbox environment.
As with our other sandbox tools, the goal is to build a foundation on which you can do everything from quickly analyzing some data, to prototyping an even-pretty sophisticated least squares adjustment or Kalman filtering algorithm – to name just a few examples.
1. Check out the example we’ll use
This is the example we’ll be using throughout the lessons below (it’s the same one we use in the Spreadsheets as a sandbox tool module):
2. Get started right away!
You need to be signed in and enrolled (see above) in order to do this step.