[BioRuby] Bringing the fun back to programming! (The first BioRuby IRC conference on Dec 19th)

[Pjotr Prins]

For me it was the other way round. Web programming in Python,
wrote ZopeInAnger, and programmed everything else in Ruby :)

I agree Python has some really nice projects for Science. I
mentioned matplotlib before.

On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 02:26:34PM +0100, Francesco Strozzi wrote:
> I have written here to give my "+1", as I completely agree with
> Pjotr and I'd like to learn new ways of using Ruby (with
> Scala/Clojure or whatever) to do the "hard" work as well...

It was not so long ago I would do the performance stuff in C. BioLib
being a point in case. C/BioLib is also a valid route. I find,
however, that for programming C/C++ bogs me down in implementation
detail. Something I don't have in Ruby, Python or Scala. 

Ruby/Perl/Python wins on rapid/agile, and even dirty coding. But if it
comes to execution speed and correctness - the new JVM languages
deliver. Part of my excitement is mixing the two ways of programming.

Note, the BioLib project is not dead. For legacy code, such as EMBOSS,
it is very useful. I will make sure it works from the JVM. I have had
little time for coding the last 4 months, but it should be better in
2011.

Pj.