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I'm an IT/SysAdmin type guy so I don't really code beyond web stuff at a hobbyist level, though I did do CompSci at uni way back when. However when I followed m
by cknight 8y ago
I'm an IT/SysAdmin type guy so I don't really code beyond web stuff at a hobbyist level, though I did do CompSci at uni way back when. However when I followed my partner overseas for a few years, the only job I had while away was working in a computational research group at a university.
I was brought on to provide a nice looking web UI for an online system that scientists could use to submit jobs to a server running molecular dynamics simulations. After finishing the job queue and interfaces though, I had plenty of time to spare. So the boss asked me to try and run some necessary manipulations on the uploaded PDB (protein data bank) files, before they would be sent to run in the simulation.
It's still the only time I have ever actually used direct material from my undergrad degree at work - using Dijkstra's algorithm and standard deviation to discover protein structural features, then manipulating them. It was also the only time I ever used the Python I spent just one semester learning a decade before. With all those libraries, I can understand why it was the language of choice my boss' field.
I made a log of the jobs as well, and in the 5 year since then, over 10,000 jobs have been submitted, helping scientists from dozens of countries all over the world. It's also the only code I've written since my uni days which isn't just typical web app type stuff. It's just this pokey little online service but I'm really proud of it, and I hope I've contributed to humanity's progress in some tiny way.