[BioEdu] What kind of programming skills should a bioinformatician have?

[Kevin Karplus]

Erwin,

I would recommend learning at least 2 major programming languages: one
that supports object-oriented programming (such as C++ or java) and
one that supports fast script writing (such as perl or python).  

After learning the basics of the lanugages, take courses that include
large programming projects.  These courses vary from college to
college, so you'll probably have to ask around locally to find out
which courses to take.  In some places it is the compiler class, in
others it is a graph algorithms class, in others it is robotics or
artificial intelligence.  It depends largely on the teaching style of
the instructor, rather than the ostensible content of the course.

In terms of content, you may also want to pick up a machine learning
class and a database class.

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Kevin Karplus 	karplus at soe.ucsc.edu	http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate Director, Bioinformatics
(Senior member, IEEE)	(Board of Directors, ISCB)
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