[BioEdu] Lanuages and environments

[Paulo Nuin]

Hi

I think this is a great discussion topic. In my opinion bioinformatics 
is a little bit more lenient regarding computer languages than computer 
science and business. You see bioinformatics applications in a variety 
of languages (from Lisp to VB) and there is no prejudice from 
users/developers in using different languages. On the "outside world" 
you usually see the advocacy groups for certain languages and in 
business you are usually tied to their programming standards, which is 
usually tied to the end user needs.

 From my personal experience, I tried to learn as much as possible of 
most of the languages I programmed in, and of course there are languages 
that appeal more and others less. In my regular work, I currently use a 
lot of C++, Python and bash scripts. I was never able to program in 
Perl, and Java looks like a mess to me. Python has become a new 
favourite for me, especially now that I am able to create nice 
interfaces with it too.

My two cents.

Cheers

Paulo
www.genedrift.org

J.W. Bizzaro wrote:
> Here's a poll on the languages that practitioners are interested in 
> learning:
>
>  http://bioinformatics.org/poll/index.php?dispid=16&vo=16
>  (#1 Python, #2 Perl, #3 Java, #4 C/C++, ...)
>
> It's not a poll on which languages are actually *used*, but there 
> should be (if not now, then someday) a good correlation.
>
> Jeff
>
> Kevin Karplus wrote:
>> I believe that the most common programming languages in bioinformatics
>> are perl, c, c++, java, and python, more or less in that order.
>>
>