Though it's probably not a good first language, if she is going to be writing code for any astrophysical applications she will have to learn IDL at some point.

Though it's probably not a good first language, if she is going to be writing code for any astrophysical applications she will have to learn IDL at some point. It's a language that's rarely used in any other field, but in astrophysics it's the language of choice.