However, I find myself scratching my head about when I would use it, or what need it's fulfilling.
When you are in Next Generation Sequencing data analysis, it is basically THE tool. Snakemake comes with anything I ever needed, since it uses conda to install workflow dependencies, tools like BWA, fastqc, multiqc etc, are all present and fresh. I feel that Snakemake was made for NGS data analysis.
Many Snakemake users, like me, are biologists that know some Python and bash, I have never used Make for example. The people pointing out weaknesses here have complex, CS related use cases it seems, for bio-informaticians in the NGS field it's a godsend.
When you are in Next Generation Sequencing data analysis, it is basically THE tool. Snakemake comes with anything I ever needed, since it uses conda to install workflow dependencies, tools like BWA, fastqc, multiqc etc, are all present and fresh. I feel that Snakemake was made for NGS data analysis.
Many Snakemake users, like me, are biologists that know some Python and bash, I have never used Make for example. The people pointing out weaknesses here have complex, CS related use cases it seems, for bio-informaticians in the NGS field it's a godsend.