Picking up on Bob’s point. As an author of a commercial program I don’t see the world coming to an end. In this melodramatic discussion the idea of encouraging young scientists to write the type of software that the community is demanding is fraught with difficulty. Unless of course a scientist can be found who enjoys drawing bitmaps.
A hobby is supposed to be related to an activity that is enjoyable. In the days of command line programs it was possible to concentrate on the part I consider enjoyable, the algorithms, and to still function as a scientist in crystallography. In the present day and from my experience computer literacy is in fact decreasing rather than increasing. If a modern program did not comprise colorful buttons, context sensitive help, ease of use, very little thought in regards to its use then that program no matter how brilliant in the algorithmic sense would find it difficult to survive. XFIT a public domain program that I wrote in 6 months has been heavily used and I suspect that the reason is not just because of the numeric algorithms but more for the GUI and the computing science ideas behind it. Bob’s work is exceptional in the algorithmic sense, to then demand computing science ideas and bells and whistles without institutional support is an anathema. Thus my advice to those who seek to encourage your scientist to write more than scientific algorithms is to do so with support and respect. alan -----Original Message----- From: Von Dreele, Robert B. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, March 19, 2004 11:16 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I would only add that much of the software development is done as a "hobby" by many us, i.e. with only grudging institutional support. Bob -----Original Message----- From: L. Cranswick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Fri 3/19/2004 3:44 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [hope this is not a resend - Email software went beserk with previous effort] >"What happens in the future?" When Bob Von Dreele and Brian Toby, to >name two, join Al Larson in retirement, (and Al finally stops working) >what happens then? A number of single crystal members on the IUCr Commission on Crystallographic Computing have been quite concerned about this as well (their observations being based on the field of small molecule crystallography). A result of these concerns is putting renewed effort into the IUCr computing schools. (next one is in Siena in 2005 - just prior to the IUCr Florence congress) http://www.iucr.org/iucr-top/comm/ccom/siena2005/ The Siena School webpage states: "The aim of the school is to have the crystallographic computing experts of the present, help train and inspire a new generation of experts in crystallographic computing." As well as IUCr Computing Commission newsletters for publishing software crystallographic programming information and help with community building. http://www.iucr.org/iucr-top/comm/ccom/newsletters/ ------- >I will be very interested in your responses. Is my prediction of coming >disaster too pessimistic? Probably. After all, the late Jose Donnay of >Johns Hopkins University always claimed that crystallography was ruined by >the invention of the computer. I never learned to what extent his opinion >was effected by the conflicts I had with his wife. Overall, I am not as pesimistic on this issue: as we have seen analytical software gaps get filled once they have become too annoying to kludge solutions from existing software packages. Examples of this could be the recent advances in powder indexing software to handle impurity peaks, new or updated software for structure solution from powder diffraction data, and new advances in fundamental parameters based Rietveld packages. One old-school Prof in London stated the personal opinion that black button that is Direct Methods (1960's?) wrecked the fun and challenge in solving crystal structures from single crystal data. This does not seem the case in solving structures from powders? The black buttons are not yet that routine(?) Though programs like EXPO and Fox are working well in that direction. Lachlan. ----------------------- Lachlan M. D. Cranswick Contact outside working hours / Coordonnees en dehors des heures de travail: E-mail / courriel: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home Tel: (613) 584-4226 Mobile/Cell: 613 401 3433 WWW: http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au/ P.O. Box 2057, Deep River, Ontario, Canada, K0J 1P0 (please use clear titles in any Email - otherwise messages might accidentally get put in the SPAM list due to large amount of junk Email being received. If you don't get an expected reply to any messages, please try again.) (Essayez d'utiliser des titres explicites - sans quoi vos messages pourraient aboutir dans un dossier de rebuts, du fait de la quantité très importante de pourriels reçue. Si vous n'obtenez pas la réponse attendue, merci de bien vouloir renvoyer un message.)
