I can only say: do not worry. There is a lot of very good crystallographers who are also very good programers among the young generation. The evolution will not stop!
Best regards
Radovan, crystallographer from a middle-age generation
Larry W. Finger a écrit:
I am going to give up my 'lurker' status on this mailing list to switch this thread to a more philosophical vein.
In the past generation, many good crystallographers have also been good programmers. I suspect it was easier to learn programming than it was to teach crystallography to a programmer. As a result, the current set of codes are very sophisticated and powerful. The question that I wish to discuss is the following: "What happens in the future?" When Bob Von Dreele and Brian Toby, to name two, join Al Larson in retirement, (and Al finally stops working) what happens then? As was made abundantly clear in the message that started this thread, if the program doesn't complain about garbage, then the input MUST be gospel. I recently got an E-mail from someone stating that there was a definite bug in my crystal-structure drawing program DRAWxtl. The evidence for this 'bug' was a V-V bond distance of 0.3 Angstom. Of course, the problem was a discrepancy between the structural coordinates and the space group. As I no longer have access to a scientific library, I could only suggest how to resolve the problem. It is even possible that the published result is the source of the problem. In any case, I have not heard back.
I will be very interested in your responses. Is my prediction of coming disaster too pessimistic? Probably. After all, the late Jose Donnay of Johns Hopkins University always claimed that crystallography was ruined by the invention of the computer. I never learned to what extent his opinion was effected by the conflicts I had with his wife.
Cheers, Larry Finger, Crystallographer (retired)
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Radovan Cerny Laboratoire de Cristallographie 24, quai Ernest-Ansermet CH-1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland Phone : [+[41] 22] 37 964 50, FAX : [+[41] 22] 37 961 08
mailto : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
URL : http://www.unige.ch/sciences/crystal/cerny/rcerny.htm
