Is there a GIS "Hello World" Equivalent?

Question

Is there the equivalent of the "Hello World" program for GIS applications?

I am looking to become more familiar with the development of GIS applications. What are the popular (and free/low cost) tutorials and/or sample applications that would help someone get started? Are there any books that you would consider essential for beginner GIS developers?

Answer 1

ESRI Their tools are definitely not cheap, but they are widely used. They do have good learning resources and tutorial materials, although many do assume you already have their products.

Answer 2

Let's give it a try:

Polylines:

(   0, 100), ( 0,     0), (   0,  50), (  80,  50), (  80,   0), (  80, 100)
( 180, 100), ( 100, 100), ( 100,  50), ( 140,  50), ( 100,  50), ( 100,   0), ( 180,   0)
( 200, 100), ( 200,   0), ( 280,   0)
( 300, 100), ( 300,   0), ( 380,   0)
( 400,  50), ( 440, 100), ( 480,  50), ( 440,   0), ( 400,  50)
( 600, 100), ( 620,   0), ( 640,  50), ( 660,   0), ( 680, 100)
( 700,  50), ( 740, 100), ( 780,  50), ( 740,   0), ( 700,  50)
( 800,   0), ( 800, 100), ( 880,  75), ( 800,  50), ( 880,   0)
( 900, 100), ( 900,   0), ( 980,   0)
(1000,   0), (1000, 100), (1080,  50), (1000,   0)

Answer 3

Perhaps these books from Pragmatic Programmers could help you:

Desktop GIS: Mapping the Planet with Open Source Tools

GIS for Web Developers: Adding Where to Your Web Applications

Answer 4

You could start with some basic desktop mapping software like uDig or Quantum GIS. And download some Shape files.

From there you might want to take a look at PostGIS. For web development start with MapServer and OpenLayers.

Would also be worth taking a look at the book Mapping Hacks.

Answer 5

If your company has ESRI software I'd recommend getting ArcMap, opening up the VBA editor and copying and pasting a few simple code samples from the help files.

If you don't have desktop software try out http://openlayers.org/ the open source equivalent of Google Maps. It has a nice API and samples.

I'd say the equivalent of "Hello World" in GIS is clicking on a map and popping up a message box with the latitude and longtitude of the click.

Answer 6

Are you interesting in desktop based GIS development or web based?

ESRI is the leader in this space. www.esri.com poke around on their site.

The Resources section of the website has lots of information. You can play around with the JavaScript API on the site and use data that they host to play with. There are several getting started sections and walk throughs here.

http://resources.esri.com/gateway/index.cfm

Here is a link to the JavaScript API resource site http://resources.esri.com/arcgisserver/apis/javascript/arcgis/index.cfm?fa=home

You can download ArcExplorer and work with that. I think it is customizable. You can view shapefiles and geodatabases with it. http://resources.esri.com/arcgisexplorer/900/index.cfm?fa=home