[BioPython] "Developing Bioinformatics Computer Skills"

[Ewan Birney]

On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Johann Visagie wrote:

> Brad Chapman on 2001-03-27 (Tue) at 14:21:45 -0500:
> > 
> > I'm a biologist who tried C++, Java and Perl before deciding python was the
> > right bet for me.
> 
> And I'm a computer scientist[1] who has used and continues to use a whole
> slew of programming languages, and though I have yet to find the perfect
> language for teaching programming to a complete newcomer, Perl is very high
> on my list of languages which are utterly UNsuited to that task.[2]  If you
> want to teach someone all the wrong habits, start him off on Perl.

It depends whether you want to teach somsone programming or get something
done (honestly). People who indulge in my-langauge-better-than-yours >
/dev/null  in my view. Clearly are not interested in solving real
problems.


Choose the language for the problem and the type of person. If you think
Perl is not suited to a large set of bioinforamtics problems then you are
not doing bioinformatics ;)