Bioperl: A trivial documentation question

[Ewan Birney]

On Wed, 26 May 1999, Steve Chervitz wrote:

> D. Joe Anderson writes:
>  > 
>  > >From the bioperl man page:
>  > 
>  >           Bioperl was then taken up by people developing code at the
>  >           large genome centres. In particular at Stanford, Steve
>  >           Chervitz (the current bioperl coordinator), at the Genome
>  >           Sequencing Centre (St Louis) Ian Korf and at the Sanger
>  >           Centre (Cambridge UK) Ewan Birney.  All of the C code XS
>  >           extensions were provided by Ewan Birney. Bioperl is used in
>  >           anger at these sites, indicating that is both useful and
>  >           that it works.
>  > 
>  > 
>  > I was intrigued by the phrase "used in anger."  What does this mean?
> 
> This is Ewan's phraseology for "used extensively for solving real
> world problems" as opposed to simply playing with it in a purely
> academic exercise. At least, this is what I understand him to mean by
> "used in anger". Ewan can elaborate more as necessary.

That is true. There *is* something slightly desparate in the phrasing, and
if anyone who has sat going 'oh no - I need to rewrite this analysis to
wrok on a new blast version tonight - how do I do it' i think knows
this sort of desparation (a real world example in my case..which bioperl
solved).

> 
> One problem with using colorful language is that it can be
> misinterpreted. Here are some possible interpretations I'm sure he
> did not intend: 
> 
>   1. Use of bioperl caused anger towards the bioperl developers.

I think this does happen sometime...

>   2. You have to be angry or desperate before using bioperl.

I'm not sure about this...

>   3. Bioperl was used to commit random acts of violence.
> 

But I do like this! I think the phrase should stay ;).

> Steve
> 
>  > ___________________________________________________________________________
>  > D. Joe Anderson, Jr.            Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry
>  > adrs@chemistry.ucsc.edu	        UCSC, Santa Cruz, CA  95064
>  > 831/459-3390                    http://elmo.ucsc.edu/~adrs/
>  > 
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Ewan Birney
<birney@sanger.ac.uk>
http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Users/birney/

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