Hi Pete, it's surely beneficial and good to know how software works especially if it's part of your research, I entirely agree. Though, on the other hand, I don't feel too bad about not knowing the CS behind the implementation of MS Word when I use it for my documents editing. I guess it depends how far you want and can afford going in understanding all that you use.
Another 2 cents.. Pavel On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 11:23 AM, Pete Meyer <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 >> >>
