Yeah, libraries aren't a good way to start because there's not enough interest in using them.
There are opportunities to build standalone tools which blow away their predecessors by multiple orders of magnitude, though; after getting enough researchers to use one such tool, you might attract sustained curiosity from a few people wondering "how the hell did s/he do that?!" and organically grow a small library with a real user base. That's one of my own long term goals, anyway.
Well I'm self-taught so I have to start somewhere. I'm not sure I could put together a stand-alone tool and still complete my Ph.D. program. Anyways I've found most stand-alone tools just aren't flexible enough and I don't feel like making something I wouldn't use myself.
Fair enough, and definitely agree with not making something you wouldn't use. (The "most [existing] stand-alone tools aren't flexible enough" problem is, however, one of the reasons why there's so much room to do better...)
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Yeah, libraries aren't a good way to start because there's not enough interest in using them.
There are opportunities to build standalone tools which blow away their predecessors by multiple orders of magnitude, though; after getting enough researchers to use one such tool, you might attract sustained curiosity from a few people wondering "how the hell did s/he do that?!" and organically grow a small library with a real user base. That's one of my own long term goals, anyway.
Well I'm self-taught so I have to start somewhere. I'm not sure I could put together a stand-alone tool and still complete my Ph.D. program. Anyways I've found most stand-alone tools just aren't flexible enough and I don't feel like making something I wouldn't use myself.
Fair enough, and definitely agree with not making something you wouldn't use. (The "most [existing] stand-alone tools aren't flexible enough" problem is, however, one of the reasons why there's so much room to do better...)
True that! Okay, you've convinced me to make it a long-term goal.