[BioPython] Lisp in bioinformatics(!)

[Jeffrey Chang]

On Mon, 28 Aug 2000, Johann Visagie wrote:

> Ewan Birney on 2000-08-22 (Tue) at 03:58:28 +0100:
> > 
> > Do they want to register biolisp and become one of hte bio* projects
> 
> Their reception to this idea was lukewarm (at best) when it was brought up.
> Silly!  Seems that very smart people have a tendency to focus too closely on
> the one field they know...  Many good programming languages have fallen into
> disuse, and Lisp is heading the same way unless they can turn on a new
> generation to its advantages.

I'll bet this has more to do with the fact that putting together open
source packages does take some time, and that very little or no academic
credit is given for software, rather than not wanting to spreading the
gospel of lisp in bioinformatics.  (((((Long sentence!)] Unfortunately
(for lisp), the people with lots of time and no lives that can contribute
to these projects are grad students, most of whom were raised on perl,
java, and a smidgeon of python.

Jeff