Show HN: A book introducing Geospatial and Rust

[ikawe]

My friend and I have been collaborating on this lighthearted introduction to doing geospatial computation in rust.

Don't know Rust? Don't know geospatial? I'd be interested to know what you think.

[jamessb]

Are you planning to mention Whitebox [1]? It seems the most significant existing geospatial project implemented in rust.

[1]: https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/

[jblindsay]

Well thank you for saying that! I'm the developer of WhiteboxTools and have been using Rust to develop it for years now. I love the language. I think Rust and geospatial are really well suited. Anyhow, as a daily reader of HackerNews, I was very surprised to see my project mentioned!

[ikawe]

To be honest, I haven't yet worked much with whitebox tools.

But, to your point, I think pointing people to "next steps" is important, and guiding them to useful tools to solve their actual problems is part of that.

If you can share, in what capacity have you been using whitebox tools? Maybe it'd give me inspiration into a good thematic lesson on the tool.

[gardenhedge]

What is cool about geospatial computation? Is there a specific type of job that deals with it?

[jblindsay]

The geospatial industry is massive, which includes jobs in geographical information systems (GIS) and remote sensing. All that imagery that is being collected by satellites and drones, it's geospatial software that is processing it, developed by GIS/RS programmers. All that location-aware data that is being collected at all times? That's GIS. Google Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps...all GIS. The geospatial sector is worth billions worldwide and many thousands of people work in the industry. Proof of that is fact that Jack Dangermond, the owner/founder of Esri, producers of one of the most widely used GIS software platforms, is one of the world's richest people.

- https://www.forbes.com/profile/jack-dangermond/?sh=256df89e6...