The hydrologist's toolbox

One is doing hydrology, s/he is a hydrologist, and asks to me how to increase his/her knowledge.
I answered that s/he should be proficient in:

• GIS
• Some hydrological model (more than one indeed)
• Databases
• Treating data
• Instrumentation

Being specific, and following the above points: 

•  We  are looking at gvSIG (but QGIS and GRASS are good choices). 
•  People use are SWAT, Topkapi-X, HEC-RAS, and in Urban contexts, SWMM (see also here). I have mine JGrass-NewAGE and GEOtop that give a lot of answers that the other models do not give. 
•  First choice is R. Then, it could be Python that has a vibrant community (Software Carpentry, Python for hydrologists, Python for Geoscientists) (for my models I use Java -see also here- and C/C++; my colleagues use the good-old FORTRAN: but these languages have a higher degree and complexity than R and Python. The latter can be used for the 90% of hydrological tasks that do not involve specific "complex" hydrological modeling).
• Learning SQL could be necessary. Postgres plus Postgis offer a professional answer. SQlite plus Spatialite can be a handy solution. See also this post.
• On this I cannot say much. But I will add information soon. 

A hydrologist should then look for classes and courses on the above topics. This blog has a lot of information about the above topics. Please keep an eye on it.  My lectures on hydrology (in Italian) are available here.