[BioRuby] Bringing the fun back to programming! (The first BioRuby IRC conference on Dec 19th)

[Chris Fields]

On Dec 12, 2010, at 10:47 AM, Pjotr Prins wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 10:46:54AM +0100, Pjotr Prins wrote:
>> We have a special community, with a special language. Ruby is one of
>> the most fun languages to work with, and we know it. 
> 
> The response is overwhelming. Does it mean no one has fun anymore? Or
> is Ruby dying a slow death in bioinformatics? Or was my message just over
> everyone's head?
> 
> If anyone is interested I could do a screencast on using BioRuby and
> BioJava on the JVM. But I fear, somehow, the effort is wasted.
> 
> Pj.

Pjotr,

I think, with efforts like this you'll find interest but also the need to demonstrate the utility of what you are proposing.  An email may not be the best medium for planning things out along those lines.  

Also, users may be interested but simply may not have the time or resources to donate to such an effort unless they have a vested interest in it, what I find to be a common problem in many informatics-related community projects.  Some commonly-used projects seem to have a 'bus factor' of 1 for this reason.

A screencast might go a long way to helping with both of those.

chris