Provide a better interface to run pipelines

[khl02007]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Right now you have to populate many tables to run analyses; this may be cumbersome to users

Describe the solution you'd like
maybe we can write functions that populate the tables, with options like parallelization etc

Describe alternatives you've considered
GUI; this may also be helpful in the future

[CBroz1]

There's an old notion among human fMRI folks about why a popular package afni shouldn't have a better GUI, or why even basic preprocessing steps should be left to the end user: the end user needs to understand each step in order to make the right decision for their data. Call it prescriptive design or paternalistic - I don't know that I fully agree, but I think there's something to be said for barriers to entry. I don't think they should be technical, and the CS knowledge is a definite burden, but I'd say 'know the tool you're using, its use-case and its limits'

I think populate_all_common(use_defaults=True, parallelize=True) could do more if we wanted it do by automatically pairing keys with defaults in params tables - but I anticipate issues that will make the end user even more averse. I'm thinking of running some of the tutorials with minirec - the default assumes 2 LEDs for position, but minirec only has one. If you run with the default, the error says the LEDs are too far apart. Maybe the error message should accommodate more cases, maybe use_defaults should detect the 1-LED case and act accordingly. But the error for the wrong assumption seems a steeper barrier than 'pick your params' to me.

[khl02007]

agreed, I'm sympathetic to 'know the tool you're using'