[BioPython] "Developing Bioinformatics Computer Skills"

[Brad Chapman]

Hi Dinu;

> I just discovered that ORA will publish this book in april:
> 
>   http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/bioskills/

Yeah, I saw of mention of this earlier -- it is really nice that
Bioinformatics is getting a high profile book like this.

> Makes me wonder if "learning computational approaches... for 
> the first time" is ideally left to the Perl league, or if it
> should be? Or does anybody know if this book also mentions
> (or even *uses*) other 'scripting' languagues as well?

Well, likely posting here you are going to find people who think that
python is better for learning computational approaches :-). In my
experience helping biologists who want to learn programming, most people
think of Perl first since it is more well know and widely used within
bioinformatics (since it's been around longer and is used in some pretty
"high-profile" programs). This is likely why they chose Perl for the
ORA book. I don't know if they mention other language choices.

On the other hand, people I know who initially expressed apprehension at
using python because they "never heard of it" ended up buying python books
when they went to the store to get their first programming language book.
The reasoning was that python seemed more approachable. 

Of course, this assesment is definately biased. I'm a biologist who tried
C++, Java and Perl before deciding python was the right bet for me.

Count-me-in-for-a-Python-and-Bioinformatics-book-ly y'rs;
Brad