Hey, cool to see you around here!
If you want to hear my humble opinion on your question, then I'd answer like this:
yes, it is fun writing an LDRAW parser and creating some GUI application around it for editing, snapping, etc.
I myself feel the urge to do so from time to time again.
And when you do that, you learn a lot. You can design your parser to be a "real" parser like taught in the books
(tokenizer, parser, annotated syntax tree, cache, etc.) or make it a quick and dirty or simple solution.
And you learn a lot about OpenGL and or GUI libraries. Or WebGL. And interesting aspects like "efficiency" of
the program language you use.
So I would agree with the previous posters:
if you get fun or a learning from it, why not go on.
But I think the best community effort would be achieved if we would not have 100 small/incomplete editors,
but instead just 1 or 2 or 3, maybe written in different languages or using different approaches,
which are developed cooperatively. There is anyway so much work to do and so few people writing parts or software
that we should combine our efforts IMHO.
If you want to hear my humble opinion on your question, then I'd answer like this:
yes, it is fun writing an LDRAW parser and creating some GUI application around it for editing, snapping, etc.
I myself feel the urge to do so from time to time again.
And when you do that, you learn a lot. You can design your parser to be a "real" parser like taught in the books
(tokenizer, parser, annotated syntax tree, cache, etc.) or make it a quick and dirty or simple solution.
And you learn a lot about OpenGL and or GUI libraries. Or WebGL. And interesting aspects like "efficiency" of
the program language you use.
So I would agree with the previous posters:
if you get fun or a learning from it, why not go on.
But I think the best community effort would be achieved if we would not have 100 small/incomplete editors,
but instead just 1 or 2 or 3, maybe written in different languages or using different approaches,
which are developed cooperatively. There is anyway so much work to do and so few people writing parts or software
that we should combine our efforts IMHO.