Perl vs. C for bioinformatics

[Joseph J. Strout]

In article <34F61DA7.32AE at anti-spam.bbsrc.ac.uk>, Pat Thoyts
<Pat.Thoyts at anti-spam.bbsrc.ac.uk> wrote:

>Tom Walsh wrote:
>[snip]
>
>> >> Strong programming skills in C are required for all positions.
>> >>
>> 
>> >I would suggest using perl instead of C.
>> 
>>  Is this a general trend in computational biology? I know a little C and I'm
>> wondering if it's worth picking up Perl as well.
>> 
>>    Tom Walsh
>
>Almost certainly. Perl is _very_ good at handling text strings.
>
>It's probably worth your tme to look at tcl/tk too - especially now
>that it works under Win32 as well as X windows. _Easy_ multi-
>platform interfaces. :)

Well shoot, as long as we're hailing favorite languages, I would strongly
recommend Python over Perl or TCL.  It's got a far cleaner design and a
more powerful standard library than either of these.  And it's just as
cross-platform, interactive, etc.  By far, the most beautiful language I've
ever used (and I've used many), in its clarity and power.

See http://www.python.org/ for more information on Python.

Cheers,
-- Joe

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,------------------------------------------------------------------.
|    Joseph J. Strout           Department of Neuroscience, UCSD   |
|    jstrout at ucsd.edu           http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~jstrout/  |
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