[exprofmaddy]

Agreed. Drummer and programmer here. I consider electronic drums to be a different instrument from acoustic drums---especially cymbals---with somewhat comparable musical functions. The advantage of e-drums is that the sound guy can turn the volume down to zero no matter how hard I'm hitting, and that's helpful in places like churches or my apartment. The other advantage is that toms (i.e., the tom samples) are always perfectly and consistently tuned. Apart from those advantages, there's far less traditional drum expressiveness in e-drums (for traditional genres like jazz and rock). The flip side is: with e-drums I can hit the cymbal and make a laser noise.

[bluGill]

With more effort I expect that eventually we will be able to model physical instruments just as good as the real thing. However it is an open question if that is good. Sometimes along the way we discover how to make something better. Of course sound is subjective and so no everyone will agree it is better.