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RE: Should I Pay or Should I Go? Discussion on GIS Software
While ESRI makes some great software, the price tag is not practical for individual use. I didn't bother learning anything else until I no longer had access to Arc, but fortunately QGIS makes the transition extremely easy. Most QGIS installations also come with a program called GrassGIS which operates in a different way but has some additional features.
I definitely think it is wise to attend the free conference, learn everything you can, and network. Even if you stop using Arc once you are finished with school, the concepts that you learn will be broadly applicable. I am with you that open-source is best way forward, but understanding how to work with the industry standard remains a critical tool. Nice post!
Thank you @gra !
About three years ago I decided to make the switch to open sourced software as much as possible. It has been a long time since I have used any ESRI products and I was curious to see if there would be any new developments from such a big company that may change the way I think about GIS analysis overall. While the R-Arc tool was very interesting (I highly recommenced checking out the Github) I struggled to see why so many large businesses (like my university) are so fast to jump on the bandwagon when there are so many free options available. I will be writing a summary post later this evening where I will go into more detail about the pros and cons.
To be honest, I have also made an attempt to move away from GUI interfaces as much as possible (which has not been easy) as a means for separating my skill set from the rest of the job hunters. I have found that there needs to be a time-benefit analysis done when determining if a GUI like QGIS is best or if there should be a script written in something like R or Python (Julia is an interesting possibility for GIS applications as well as it grows its repos and libraries).
Thanks again for the comment I appreciate the meaningful conversation you bring to my posts!