I've done both. The crucial difference is that computer work is far more productive than bench work. If you spend a month at your computer, you will get somethi

I've done both. The crucial difference is that computer work is far more productive than bench work. If you spend a month at your computer, you will get something out of it. You can easily spend a month at the bench and come away with nothing at all. Part of the secret to success in bench work is finding a seam which you can mine productively. You have some technique or system set up and working, and you can grind out findings from it. But it takes time to establish that seam, and it isn't necessarily anywhere near where the actually interesting problems are. I worked on cell migration. We used a particular cell type that had very good, consistent migratory behaviour, which made it a good system. But it was a primary culture, made fresh from dissected tissue every day. Primary cultures are highly resistant to having DNA put into them. Pretty much all modern cell biology hinges on putting DNA into cells. I spent a year or so trying different techniques (including making adenoviral vectors!). Eventually, i found something which worked okay. But that was just the start of actually doing interesting work - the year up to that point had produced nothing. This is completely normal in bench work, but would be pretty shocking with computers.