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Nice story! I have a friend who worked in bioinformatics, but he was good at programming and went to better-paying pastures. I wonder if the problem is twofold

Nice story! I have a friend who worked in bioinformatics, but he was good at programming and went to better-paying pastures. I wonder if the problem is twofold: 1) a lack of education compounded by 2) the rapid evolution of computer systems. Unix is a rare beast in that not just its philosophy but even its components survive to this day and remain relevant[1]. People in unrelated fields rebuild tools that could just as well be assembled using Unix's basic components, but they're just not aware of them. And why would they look for these antiquated tools? They've been trained to reasonably expect old tools to have been replaced by newer, better, more featureful ones. [1] AWK was created before I was born, and I'm among the more senior engineers in my 20+ team.

kumarharsh 8y ago
I think it's just that they are good at biology, not computers. I mean if they entrusted ME to tell two amino acids apart by looking at their behaviour, I'd take a month! From what I've seen, amid all the research, failed experiments, constant fight for funding (in some cases) and "life" in general, people have much less time to learn these critical things like programming / tools so useful to them. They will do it at some point, but probably not till their life depended on it. On the other hand, if life depended on me recognizing those amino acids, we'd all be :-)
ENGNR 8y ago
I think part of it too is that it's exploratory. Sometimes I use javascript to write music and as creative twists and turns happen the code folds in on itself in ugly ways that don't happen when solving a clearer problem Compounded by the fact that in science once you have the result the code is probably just an artifact so there's no real reason to refactor it
- kkaranth 8y ago
  > Sometimes I use javascript to write music Could you explain what you mean by this?
  - ENGNR 8y ago
    Just messing around and nothing worth showing, but the web audio API gives all the low level stuff, and then hot module reload from webpack means you can change a function while the music is playing and it updates in real time. Not being bound by a GUI makes it trivial to do things like arpeggiate or automate filters, and then orchestrate that at higher levels It's easier to break the mould if you're not bound by other people's software, but starts to look awfully sciency if you explore too far : D So it's useful to keep wiping the slate to not be bogged down by previous experiments
    - usrusr 8y ago
      So are you programming on the sequence level (notes, parameter automation) instead of on the synthesis level? From a previous life as a music software geek I remember an abundance of programming environments for synthesis, and a shocking lack of options for programming one level higher.
      - abhishekjha 8y ago
        I have never done music programming. Where can I read more about this?
        cat199 8y ago
        not 100% focused on the programming/sound design side of things, but https://linuxaudio.org/resources.html https://linuxaudio.org/resources.html has a lot of good pointers. pd, processing, chuck, cm/clm, or just old-school mod-tracking are some good ways to get going
newen 8y ago
It's actually pretty common in all kinds of fields to see others reproduce things that they have known for decades. A fun (and infamous) example is this paper (http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/2/152 http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/2/152) which rediscovers the trapezoidal rule to calculate area under the curve and gets published.
xtreme 8y ago
I am always impressed by the UNIX tools because of their simplicity and yet how easily you can build powerful systems due to their composability. But what I find even more amazing is that they "got it right" so many years ago. We have progressed so much in our understanding of computing and human-computer-interaction, but not many tools that have come out recently can claim similar success.

kumarharsh 8y ago

I think it's just that they are good at biology, not computers. I mean if they entrusted ME to tell two amino acids apart by looking at their behaviour, I'd take a month! From what I've seen, amid all the research, failed experiments, constant fight for funding (in some cases) and "life" in general, people have much less time to learn these critical things like programming / tools so useful to them. They will do it at some point, but probably not till their life depended on it. On the other hand, if life depended on me recognizing those amino acids, we'd all be :-)

ENGNR 8y ago

I think part of it too is that it's exploratory. Sometimes I use javascript to write music and as creative twists and turns happen the code folds in on itself in ugly ways that don't happen when solving a clearer problem Compounded by the fact that in science once you have the result the code is probably just an artifact so there's no real reason to refactor it

kkaranth 8y ago
> Sometimes I use javascript to write music Could you explain what you mean by this?
- ENGNR 8y ago
  Just messing around and nothing worth showing, but the web audio API gives all the low level stuff, and then hot module reload from webpack means you can change a function while the music is playing and it updates in real time. Not being bound by a GUI makes it trivial to do things like arpeggiate or automate filters, and then orchestrate that at higher levels It's easier to break the mould if you're not bound by other people's software, but starts to look awfully sciency if you explore too far : D So it's useful to keep wiping the slate to not be bogged down by previous experiments
  - usrusr 8y ago
    So are you programming on the sequence level (notes, parameter automation) instead of on the synthesis level? From a previous life as a music software geek I remember an abundance of programming environments for synthesis, and a shocking lack of options for programming one level higher.
    - abhishekjha 8y ago
      I have never done music programming. Where can I read more about this?
      - cat199 8y ago
        not 100% focused on the programming/sound design side of things, but https://linuxaudio.org/resources.html https://linuxaudio.org/resources.html has a lot of good pointers. pd, processing, chuck, cm/clm, or just old-school mod-tracking are some good ways to get going

newen 8y ago

It's actually pretty common in all kinds of fields to see others reproduce things that they have known for decades. A fun (and infamous) example is this paper (http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/2/152 http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/2/152) which rediscovers the trapezoidal rule to calculate area under the curve and gets published.

xtreme 8y ago

I am always impressed by the UNIX tools because of their simplicity and yet how easily you can build powerful systems due to their composability. But what I find even more amazing is that they "got it right" so many years ago. We have progressed so much in our understanding of computing and human-computer-interaction, but not many tools that have come out recently can claim similar success.