[Biojava-l] Convince us to use BioJava (and come to the next bootcamp)

[Tom Hudson]

A research group here at UNCW is starting a couple of bioinformatics 
projects in Java.  I said, "look here, there's this open-source group on 
the web that's created a huge amount of code already, let's use it!"

The responses I've gotten have been on the order of "Eww, 600+ classes. 
I can write my own parser faster than I can figure out what they're 
doing." and "We don't need data models anywhere near that complex."  So 
why should we use BioJava?  The "overview" on the web page hasn't 
convinced anybody here.

(Caveats: right now we're a bunch of computer people and a bunch of 
biologists, with nobody really cross-trained; I understand that some day 
the biologists may start asking questions that require a nested-feature 
view of the world, but haven't convinced the other computer people to 
plan for that day yet, and the biologists can't think of any right now.)

On a closely related topic, I want to attend a BioJava Boot Camp.  This 
year's appears to have been announced a month and a half ahead. 
Unfortunately, for some US federal grants, I have to schedule my travel 
a year ahead and more.  When's the next Boot Camp?

Tom
// hudsont@uncwil.edu