[Bioperl-l] Refactoring Locations...

[Ewan Birney]

On Mon, 1 Jul 2002, Lincoln Stein wrote:

> I'm going to defend my position, but this will be my last word on the subject 
> (this isn't worth extended discussion or a flame war).
> 
> 0)  Going to space-oriented coordinates makes our code simpler, less buggy, 
> and makes it easier to add new modules.
> 
> 1) If we keep the API the same, then external applications won't need to know 
> we made the change.  The only apps that will break is those that broke 
> encapsulation by going directly to the hash.

But then we have a phase change between the interface and the 
implementation and that will confuse people ;)

> 
> 2) We have to rewrite BioPerl from the ground up next year in any case in 
> order to support perl 6.0.
> 

I think of Perl 6 as a language with many similar features to Perl 5 but 
not the same.

Hence there will be a Bioperl-5 series and a Bioperl-6 series


Rule 1: Bioperl-5 and Bioperl-6 should strive to have the same interfaces


But - yes - possible to imagine doing a 0 implementation in there. 
Hmmm.... I wonder what the BioJava boys do.


Discussion worth having over a beer at BOSC.