Advanced Python for Biologists

Thu, 05 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

When I was writing Python for Biologists (see my previous guest post) I was extremely ruthless about leaving material out. I wanted the book to cover pretty much the same set of language features that I teach in my instructor-led introductory programming courses, which meant I had to limit the scope of the book to what an average, motivated beginner could take in in a full-time week of study. This restriction meant that, while I think the overall balance of material in Python for Biologists is still the most useful set for novice programmers, there are big topics that didn't make the cut. There's no mention of object-oriented or functional programming, nothing about Python's extremely elegant comprehension syntax, and nothing on recursion. As I was writing, I made a list of all these omissions, with the promise to myself that I would write about them some day.

Python for Biologists

Mon, 14 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Programmers, at least as found in scientific research institutions, generally fall into two groups. There are people with a computer science background, for whom programming is a way of Thinking About The World, and people with a scientific background, for whom programming is a way of Getting Things Done.

Martin Jones on The Carpentries

Advanced Python for Biologists

Python for Biologists