[Bioperl-l] Request for advice and pointers on a project to h elp biologists d o simple formatting and analysis

[Amir Karger]

Stefan Kirov wrote [responding to Andreas]:
> 
> Allow me disagree. My understanding is this project is more 
> about making biologist "computational hungry" rather than 
> creating effective applications from a computation point of view. 
> So I think it is more of 
> an outreach project (did I get this right Amir).  

Well, not quite. I absolutely want these tools to be useful, but I don't
expect them to solve all problems. On the other hand, there is definitely
the potential that the scripts will:

1. Provide very useful examples that biologists can "tweak". This is much
easier than writing programs from scratch, so it can provide a much less
threatening intro to programming.

2. Demonstrate to biologists that Perl is extremely useful.

> Bioperl. The next 
> logical thing for any biologist who is starting to use the 
> computer as 
> something more than a typewriter is to use something like Bioperl, 
> because it is quite easy to understand and use (in many cases anyway).

Absolutely.  Don't get me wrong: if we could convince everyone on Earth to
learn Perl, I'd be thrilled. And for every experimental biologist to learn
Bioperl. I'm a big fan.  It's just that a lot of people don't have the time
or will to learn programming.

-Amir