Having used computers myself for about twenty-five years I agree with you that
chemists should not be afraid of them and should enjoy their usefulnes...
...BUT...
My experience has been that a minority of chemists actually do this. Most of
our staff regard computers as a necessary, mysterious and mystifying evil, to
be tholed like our current wet weather. One of our staff actually refuses to
use one at all. Most graduate students can't find the keys on the keyboard,
let alone type accurately. Our chemistry undergraduates get courses on computer
use and are required to produce at least some of their lab reports using them.
Only about a third of them don't actually resent this. The exceptions are the
physical chemists, who tend to be much more relaxed with computers, but they
don't do much NMR.
The problem goes beyond personal hostility to computers. We do not have a
computing officer in this department, nor are we likely to get one in the
forseeable future - so you can forget about Linux and UNIX, for they need
regular attention by a system administrator. Our Computer Centre as a matter of
policy, does not sort out departmental computers, except on a spare-time, do-
you-a-favour-at-lunchtime-if-we-can arrangement.
Macs are easy to look after and sort out when they get in a muddle. In fact
muddle is the biggest problem. People let both their own computers and the
public access ones get in a similar untidy state to their offices and
workbenches. The result is even more need for a computing officer to sort out
the mess. At lest with Macs those of us of the faith can help out baffled
colleagues quickly in our spare time.
We shall continue to use Macs here, for the very reason that so many allegedly
professional computer people hate them - they're easy for the user to use. I
shall continue to seek out NMR processing programs that run on the Mac because
there's a good chance that the originators of such programs follow Apple's
Human Interface Guidelines. (Some of you don't, and you should!) That makes
for less stress and hostility, easier learning of the program by the novice and
ready integration of material with other Mac programs, such as ChemDraw and
Word.
And if by any possiblity someone could come up with a Macintosh program to
drive our DPX instead of WeirdNMR, I might be more than interested.
Flames to the address below.
Alan
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Dr A S F Boyd Chemistry Department
NMR Spectroscopist Heriot-Watt University
phone: +44-131-451 3214 Riccarton
fax: +44-131-451 3180 Edinburgh
a.s.f.boyd@hw.ac.uk EH14 4AS
http://dava.che.hw.ac.uk/ Scotland
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