YABLONSKY@BIOVAX.BITNET (Michael D Yablonsky Dept of Molecular Karma at the Waksman (02/07/90)
Hi everyone!!! I am not about to resummarize the marvellous postings of Stephen C., Lisa C., Michael G., U.D.O. etc...but I will toss my pennys into the discussion. I learned GCG back on version 4.something while I was doing my thesis. Had it not been for someone who really had the interest to learn the program (I know you're reading this Keith) I would never have taken it on myself. Luckily I had someone within earshot to bounce the constant flow of questions off of. It turned out that outside the systems personal we became the only two people we knew who could use the program. The reasons for this were 1) We liked DOS and therefore could deal with DCL 2) WE HAD TO. The point here is that nobody is going to subject themselves to learning GCG unless they are able to and they have to. Most of you seem to be sysops who are responsible for maintaining an envionment for researchers like me. It shouldn't be a problem for you to learn the program, besides...SOMEONE at each site has to. Over the years I have used the program less and less as it becomes larger and more formidable. As new programs are added I just don't have the time to learn them. I have slid from local GCG guru to better than average user because I just don't have the time to keep up with it all. Add to that a switch from IBM to a Mac 030 as my main machine and you get someone who is willing to wait for the mac applications to catch up. A solution???? You expect too much!!! I look at this conflict and believe that computer aided sequence manipulation and analysis has become a discipline as much as virology or immunology. You use GCG and Clustal as I use enzymes and gels. What was once a program for entering and organizing sequence data has become a tool of the theoretician as well. So what are you going to do??? Loose the day to day sequencer and keep the hard core sequence analyzers??? These are rarely the same person, at least not for long. I have a suggestion for you to think about. I have seen some nice shells written for the GCG package. Why aren't they incorporated into the package??? Are these taboo??? I would suggest an effort to develop the user interface (perhaps through a shell) to encourage the beginning user. Meet the user half way. Keep your ability to modfiy the package and therefore the advantages of that flexibility but do something for the user. As users get more involved they may dig into the help or manuals. Users with experience will find their way somehow. What you have to do is get them the experience to reach that point. Just some thoughts from an ex-GCGuru.... Mike Yablonsky Yablonsky@mbcl.rutgers.edu "Batch Job??? Batch Job??? Like I have time to wait for my data???"
STONE@YALEMED.BITNET (02/07/90)
Mike Yablonsky writes: >I have a suggestion for you to think about. I have seen some nice >shells written for the GCG package. Why aren't they incorporated >into the package??? Are these taboo??? I would suggest an effort to >develop the user interface (perhaps through a shell) to encourage the >beginning user. Meet the user half way. Keep your ability to modfiy >the package and therefore the advantages of that flexibility but do >something for the user. As users get more involved they may dig into >the help or manuals. Users with experience will find their way >somehow. What you have to do is get them the experience to reach >that point. Hear - Hear .... GCG must do something to accomadate the novice or occasional user. The Information for New Users section in the manual is a start, but what would be more helpful is a version of the program manual for the novice. GCG should include plain english explanations of all questions and command line switchs for all of it's programs. These explanations should tell the user what the answers mean to the problem at hand. Lisa Caballero recently explaned the meaning of the, "Integrate how many adjacent diagonals?" question in GELOVERLAP and WORDSEARCH. Her explanation was accurate and extremely usefull. Since, even the newest user could understand the important role of the answer to the stringency of search. Explanations such as Lisa's should be incorporated into a GCG manual. Maybe there should be a new Tutorial Manual... ____________________________________________________________________________ Lynna Stone-Infeld, User Support Specialist STONE@YALEMED.BITNET Biomedical Computing Unit, Yale Univ., Sch. of Med., New Haven, CT, 06510 My opinions are my own!