Comments for semaphoront

Comment on programming and evolutionary biology by Jake

Jake — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 12:35:53 +0000

For a similar perspective, see:

Comment on science heroes by April

April — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:51:12 +0000

Check out http://www.scienceheroes.com they are doing some cool stuff to get kids interested in life saving scientists and discoveries.

Comment on programming and evolutionary biology by Stephen Smith

Stephen Smith — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:39:08 +0000

Hey Hilmar,
What is doing it, is that in addition to the a general speedup of at least 10x, I have enough low-level access that I can implement more efficient memory management and other algorithmic tricks that Python won’t allow.
So I agree. C++ is not 1000x faster than Python. But the lower-level access allows me to tweak aspects that Python doesn’t allow.
Of course, some would suggest to just wrap some C++ with Python, but I have not found the user base than can deal with those installs yet (especially since some people have problems with just regular Python or C++ installs, let alone the two together).
Another aspect I didn’t bother mentioning is parallelization (with Pthreads for C++) for use of multiple cores (not a cluster). A whole other post…

Comment on programming and evolutionary biology by Drycafe

Drycafe — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:30:59 +0000

Hi Stephen, are you sure the 1000x speedup when going from Python to C++ is because C++ is 1000x times faster than Python? Are you comparing the C++ version to the most performance-efficient version of the Python version of lagrange?

Comment on science heroes by Nick (Matzke)

Nick (Matzke) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:57:53 +0000

Neil DeGrasse Tyson is pretty much officially the new Carl Sagan, and he’s the perfect man for the job. We’re still looking for a new Stephen Jay Gould though.

Comment on Pairwise alignment alternatives to BLAST — back to basics by Stephen Smith

Stephen Smith — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 01:05:24 +0000

No problem, glad it is helpful! Which info are you looking for, alignment or the computational stuff?

Comment on incentives and software development in evolutionary biology by Stephen Smith

Stephen Smith — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 01:04:42 +0000

Hi anton,
A demo of which?

Comment on Pairwise alignment alternatives to BLAST — back to basics by Unbrick Psp

Unbrick Psp — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 05:11:53 +0000

I have been searching hard for info on this, so thanks for the post, any ideas where I can get more information?

Comment on incentives and software development in evolutionary biology by anton

anton — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:26:57 +0000

Hi Stephen,
is there any demo of the program?

Comment on science education in North Carolina by Brian O'Meara

Brian O'Meara — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:32:22 +0000

I've had similar things happen in zoos. Whenever there are two or more species of hoofed mammals in an enclosure, there's a parent telling his or her child that the individuals of the smaller species are the "babies" of the bigger one. So much for folk taxonomy. On the plus side for science education in NC, there's the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. They do extensive and innovative science outreach and the museum itself is quite well-designed. I haven't interacted much with their volunteers, though, so I don't know their level of science knowledge.