Nat,
I agree that deep understanding of column-formatted text isn't really
necessary (there's not much internal complexity there).
I was attempting to point out that the general rule of not re-inventing
the wheel doesn't always apply. Even when we're addressing biological
questions, if we're using computational tools then I feel it's helpful
to understand how those tools work (and possibly more importantly, how
to tell when they fail to work as we would expect).
Just my 2 cents...
Pete
Nat Echols wrote:
On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 8:37 AM, Pete Meyer <[email protected]> wrote:
On the other hand, programming an implementation of something is a good
way to make sure that you really understand it - even if you end up using
another program.
I would argue that it's not really necessary to understand the column
formatting of a PDB file, any more than it's necessary to understand how
binary data is arranged in an MTZ file. (Especially since the long-term
plan is to migrate to mmCIF, which is more flexible and can store far more
information.) We're ultimately trying to answer questions of biology and
chemistry, not informatics, and writing a parser that actually handles all
of the variety in the PDB (let alone the garbage produced by some programs)
is far more difficult than it sounds.
-Nat
