[Bioperl-l] some not-so-good perl practice in bioperl

[Ewan Birney]

> Ideally someone should be able to grok the majority of the bioperl OM by
> scrolling through a few pages of ascii text using a compact declarative
> representation.
>
> Many of us are interested in this parallel project, with a view to winning
> over the AUTOLOAD skeptics and forming the basis of bioperl-2.x, but this
> is only going to happen if we get coding. Moaning (or patronising) on the
> list about the existing codebase achieves nothing other than annoying
> people.

Amen brother. You are clearly on the other side of this divide than I am,
but even I have strange recurring episodes of yearnings for python/jython
due to the need of the *language* giving us the support for the compact
coding rather than bolting it on like some sort of steam-driven-engine
contraption. (And Jython allows you to mix super-strong typed java with
happy-go-lucky run-time-and-super-loose python semantics. Lovely.).

But then my strict {} parser which has been hard-wired into my neurons
just loses it with the tab thing, and I find the __blah__ syntax as
bizarre as any @{$ref} syntax and I sulk back to Perl....


... my fervent hope is that Perl6 has that perfect blend, and that Bioperl
2.0 moves seemlessly from Perl5 with extra-bits to Perl6.


... (and world peace of course!)



I would like to really encourage the Chris/Aaron's etc of this world to
play around with a Bioperl 2.0 style system --- I'd be very interested in
the outcome.



e


(I hope everyone had a nice christmas...)