A Realistic View of Genealogy's Meaning & Importance
Sept 3, 2021 18:03:15 GMT -8
Post by Uncle Buddy on Sept 3, 2021 18:03:15 GMT -8
I often wonder how a finished version of Treebard--which will probably include not one iota of data on DNA--would be received. But in general I'm confident that sticking to the basics of genealogy is the right decision. A lot of what's wrong with existing genieware is that the software tries to do too much. Since it's for sale (except for Gramps?) it has to try to attract a large customer base.
Well if it was free, it would not have to appeal to every back alley of genealogy, such as web scraping. A lot of people would try it, and if it were fun and easy to learn and use, a lot of people would keep using it and would recommend it to others. I can't think of any reason why I'd want my software to gather research for me, i.e. scrape data off of websites. Maybe if I was so deeply addicted to genealogy that no rock could ever go unturned... But I traded that kind of obsessiveness for writing my own genieware, and it's a lot more fulfilling to me personally. Writing code is not for everybody, and I do look forward to doing more genealogy if I ever finish Treebard. But without a genealogy database software that I truly enjoy using, what would be the point of amassing trivia about dead people? I have thousands and thousands of documents on my computer that are waiting to be input to a database. But not just any database.
Here's a great quote from a very good article:
The whole article by Nathan Lents, a genealogy enthusiast and professor of molecular biology, is at the link below, and everyone who loves genealogy should read this:
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beastly-behavior/201801/the-meaning-and-meaninglessness-genealogy
Well if it was free, it would not have to appeal to every back alley of genealogy, such as web scraping. A lot of people would try it, and if it were fun and easy to learn and use, a lot of people would keep using it and would recommend it to others. I can't think of any reason why I'd want my software to gather research for me, i.e. scrape data off of websites. Maybe if I was so deeply addicted to genealogy that no rock could ever go unturned... But I traded that kind of obsessiveness for writing my own genieware, and it's a lot more fulfilling to me personally. Writing code is not for everybody, and I do look forward to doing more genealogy if I ever finish Treebard. But without a genealogy database software that I truly enjoy using, what would be the point of amassing trivia about dead people? I have thousands and thousands of documents on my computer that are waiting to be input to a database. But not just any database.
Here's a great quote from a very good article:
Biogeographical Ancestry
More molecular forms of ancestor-seeking have now burst onto the scene with millions of people having their DNA analyzed by 23andme, Ancestry.com, National Geographic, and others. There are two big problems with this, however. First, different companies can give quite different results, and secondly, the whole process of assigning DNA sequences to geographic ancestry is probabilistic, not certain, and this isn't always presented clearly. In some cases, the error range can be huge. In other words, the science is just not there yet and it might never be, given how intermixed we all actually are. Individuals and families were always crossing borders and mixing together.
At best, an "ancestry report" can only tell you that some of your ancestors likely lived somewhere within a big and poorly defined region for maybe a few generations.
More molecular forms of ancestor-seeking have now burst onto the scene with millions of people having their DNA analyzed by 23andme, Ancestry.com, National Geographic, and others. There are two big problems with this, however. First, different companies can give quite different results, and secondly, the whole process of assigning DNA sequences to geographic ancestry is probabilistic, not certain, and this isn't always presented clearly. In some cases, the error range can be huge. In other words, the science is just not there yet and it might never be, given how intermixed we all actually are. Individuals and families were always crossing borders and mixing together.
At best, an "ancestry report" can only tell you that some of your ancestors likely lived somewhere within a big and poorly defined region for maybe a few generations.
The whole article by Nathan Lents, a genealogy enthusiast and professor of molecular biology, is at the link below, and everyone who loves genealogy should read this:
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beastly-behavior/201801/the-meaning-and-meaninglessness-genealogy