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Looks more like the scientists are choosing the wrong tool to do their job. Sure you can use excel, to get a sense of the data, but for god sake, there are bett
by pelasaco 5y ago
Looks more like the scientists are choosing the wrong tool to do their job. Sure you can use excel, to get a sense of the data, but for god sake, there are better tools for that - or even contribute to an existing open source one to do what you need. I'm quite sure scientists could get some grants to hire actual software engineers to come up with a better solution, based on the open source options existing there.
- hpcjoe 5y ago> I'm quite sure scientists could get some grants to hire actual software engineers to come up with a better solution Uh ... no. Grants rarely ever support SWE outside of a core application. No granting agency would support writing a new open source tool that effectively replicates what is available in market today. You are right in that genomic scientists chose poorly here. Excel isn't the right tool for the job, but there are very few options that could work, and the others required some assembly ... which they couldn't get money to fund. And the other potential solutions were not ubiquitous. For them, renaming genes is the easier solution than switching workflows to new (to be assembled) tooling. Remember, scientists are people too ... they will opt to take paths of lower resistance even when they are suboptimal.
- pelasaco 5y agoThe error is to assume that we have a tool available to do it, aka Excel. If they assume that there is no tool available, then a tool have to be found/developed.