tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36768584.post60298601263010329..comments2024-03-03T18:49:34.382-05:00Comments on Omics! Omics!: Why Is LISP So Rare in Bioinformatics?Keith Robisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04765318239070312590noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36768584.post-30938615968081003082023-02-03T08:32:31.363-05:002023-02-03T08:32:31.363-05:00The field of Bioinformatics Research has revolutio...The field of <a href="https://osrc.network/bioinformatics-research/" rel="nofollow">Bioinformatics Research</a> has revolutionized the analysis of data in many areas of biology. It allows us to seek answers for the most important and fundamental biological questions without the burden of accumulating large volumes of data.OpenSource Research Collaborationhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13724645537727854905noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36768584.post-6951650220880625312018-12-17T19:13:28.128-05:002018-12-17T19:13:28.128-05:00If you're interested in Lisp you should also h...If you're interested in Lisp you should also have a look at Julia which shares many many qualities with Lisp but with a much friendlier syntax. There is a Julia bioinformatics community with an increasing number of available libraries (see biojulia.net). R.K.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36768584.post-80440252058064524712017-11-11T11:26:14.353-05:002017-11-11T11:26:14.353-05:00Turbo Pascal...thats a blast from the past. I reme...Turbo Pascal...thats a blast from the past. I remember installing it from 3.5" floppyAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04792534774610820976noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36768584.post-2901498145565206432017-09-24T14:05:47.281-04:002017-09-24T14:05:47.281-04:00Well, there's the general resurgence of LISP-l...Well, there's the general resurgence of LISP-like languages over the last few years spawned by Clojure/Clojurescript. I'm not sure if Clojure "officially" counts as being Lisp as some diehards refuse to see even Scheme as being a version of Lisp, but it clearly is very Lisp-inspired at any rate. There's a BioClojure for the typical Bio* needs (Plieskatt, et al, 2014).Jonathan Badgerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04921990886076027719noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36768584.post-63448622449897662452017-09-24T12:42:31.107-04:002017-09-24T12:42:31.107-04:00I did some LISP programming, back in the 1970s whe...I did some LISP programming, back in the 1970s when it was fashionable. LISP is a great theoreticians' language, as programs can be manipulated and reasoned about easily. It is a terrible language for writing code that has to be maintained by people other than the original author, as its readability is low even by the standards of programming languages. It is more suited for toy examples than for production code.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36768584.post-25050111962340950762017-09-24T10:23:27.527-04:002017-09-24T10:23:27.527-04:00As you say, most bioinformatics is self-taught, fo...As you say, most bioinformatics is self-taught, for better or worse. The vast majority of the time, a nascent bioinformatics programmer just needs to convert some file types, or do some string processing, and when they start Googling they get steered well away from Lisp or Fortran, and for good reason, in that regard. And then they find Bioperl, or Biopython or Bioconductor, and they're off to the races. <br /><br />I suspect that more bioinformatics comes from other scientific disciplines than it does from direct computer science. At NERSC, we do still have to support a lot of Fortran. Get at least a few help desk tickets a week looking for Fortran compilation help. Quite a lot of the monolithic physics and Astronomy code is Fortran. I've never seen anyone ask for Lisp support. I think it's just not really used by anyone at this point in science, though I'm obviously not certain. (Could be the guys using it just don't need help desk support...)Scholanderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12933906551105000203noreply@blogger.com