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GeneralRe: Math research team maps E8! Pin
DavidNohejl20-Mar-07 6:48
DavidNohejl20-Mar-07 6:48 
GeneralRe: Math research team maps E8! Pin
El Corazon20-Mar-07 7:10
El Corazon20-Mar-07 7:10 
GeneralRe: Math research team maps E8! Pin
Russell Jones21-Mar-07 22:44
Russell Jones21-Mar-07 22:44 
QuestionBioinformatic algorithms Pin
bufugus17-Mar-07 23:50
bufugus17-Mar-07 23:50 
AnswerRe: Bioinformatic algorithms Pin
MikeMarq20-Mar-07 7:39
MikeMarq20-Mar-07 7:39 
GeneralRe: Bioinformatic algorithms Pin
DavidNohejl20-Mar-07 22:59
DavidNohejl20-Mar-07 22:59 
GeneralRe: Bioinformatic algorithms Pin
MikeMarq21-Mar-07 5:41
MikeMarq21-Mar-07 5:41 
GeneralRe: Bioinformatic algorithms Pin
Nathan Addy29-Mar-07 21:23
Nathan Addy29-Mar-07 21:23 
I agree with the point of what you're saying, but not the specific advice.

My advice to any university student/post doc/academic who is looking to learn bioinformatics, I would say "DO NOT learn vb.net. Don't learn C# either." (although c# wouldn't be as bad as vb.net).

Now, I haven't ever used either of those languages, so I don't actually know whether or not they would be better or not than my own recommendations. All I can say is that in the academic bioinformatics world (I don't know what is standard for industry) the languages to learn would be Perl, Python, and C++. Perl is more popular, although I would recommend Python is the better choice (better syntax, better language features, easier to work with, a more promising future) between the two. Any serious bioinformatics student MUST learn one or the other. C++ isn't essential, but you move ahead if you know it well.

For better or worse (I'm not judging today), using C# will set you off in the corner and get you funny looks from the community/your colleagues. Using vb.net will probably get you completely shunned (my boss, who is a mathematician/scientific programmer, spends his free time working on a multi-threaded, garbage collected implementation of lisp -- imagine how he would respond to someone saying their language of choice was vb.net).

In my few years of experience, the academic scientific programming world does not in any way resemble the industrial programming world. I know of a single example of a scientific programming project using c# (which is regarded as a huge mistake by everyone else). Everything else is almost exclusively written in C, C++, Perl, or Python. A couple java programs here and there, too. One law of human behavior is that to be accepted by a group, you'll have to conform to the culture of that group, and that rule applies here. So learn Python or Perl first (but you should choose Python).

I don't have time to do it for anyone, but there are numerous online python tutorials that are specifically written for bioinformatics. I also would highly recommend Biopython[^] as a great library that will help you represent various biological sequence types (amino acid, dna, rna, etc). Finally, and probably most importantly, I would recommend the book Biological Sequence Analysis by Durbin, Eddy, some other guys. It's a fantastic book, and gives a great overview to the field (I dont recall if it discusses clustering specifically, but it talks about everything else). It's a little heavy on the math, but if you're doing statistical analysis of patterns in huge data sets, you'd better accept "a little heavy on the math" as a fact of life. Big Grin | :-D
GeneralRe: Bioinformatic algorithms Pin
MikeMarq30-Mar-07 19:45
MikeMarq30-Mar-07 19:45 
AnswerRe: Bioinformatic algorithms Pin
DavidNohejl20-Mar-07 23:00
DavidNohejl20-Mar-07 23:00 
QuestionSearch algorithm Pin
N a v a n e e t h16-Mar-07 2:48
N a v a n e e t h16-Mar-07 2:48 
AnswerRe: Search algorithm Pin
CPallini16-Mar-07 3:00
mveCPallini16-Mar-07 3:00 
AnswerRe: Search algorithm Pin
joon vh.19-Mar-07 3:36
joon vh.19-Mar-07 3:36 
QuestionPlease tell me about dithering. How can I change color depth of bmp 24 bits to bmp 4 bits? Pin
FlytotheBluesky14-Mar-07 18:13
FlytotheBluesky14-Mar-07 18:13 
AnswerRe: Please tell me about dithering. How can I change color depth of bmp 24 bits to bmp 4 bits? Pin
RabidHamster17-Mar-07 18:52
RabidHamster17-Mar-07 18:52 
AnswerRe: Please tell me about dithering. How can I change color depth of bmp 24 bits to bmp 4 bits? Pin
Rilhas19-May-07 10:11
Rilhas19-May-07 10:11 
QuestionWeighted Decision Pin
Mark J. Miller14-Mar-07 8:56
Mark J. Miller14-Mar-07 8:56 
AnswerRe: Weighted Decision Pin
Dan Neely14-Mar-07 9:55
Dan Neely14-Mar-07 9:55 
GeneralRe: Weighted Decision Pin
Mark J. Miller14-Mar-07 9:59
Mark J. Miller14-Mar-07 9:59 
GeneralRe: Weighted Decision Pin
Mark J. Miller14-Mar-07 10:18
Mark J. Miller14-Mar-07 10:18 
QuestionPi Day Pin
ricecake14-Mar-07 3:32
ricecake14-Mar-07 3:32 
AnswerRe: Pi Day Pin
Shog914-Mar-07 5:03
sitebuilderShog914-Mar-07 5:03 
GeneralRe: Pi Day Pin
ricecake14-Mar-07 5:08
ricecake14-Mar-07 5:08 
AnswerRe: Pi Day Pin
Dan Neely14-Mar-07 5:15
Dan Neely14-Mar-07 5:15 
QuestionMatlab help Pin
ashee rai11-Mar-07 14:40
ashee rai11-Mar-07 14:40 

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