Jan Bottorff wrote:
> 
> >Mind you, if we're talking of stuff as intensive as the Human Genome,
> >we're talking of very serious number crunching.
> 
> A friend of mine (who is quite into Bioinformatics) and I (who knows almost
> nothing about Bioinformatics) had a discussion a few weeks ago. It seemed
> like the thought was that many of the algorithms would be more efficient if
> fancy pattern matching logic was used instead of brute force compute power.
> For example, a multiple parallel state machine pattern search (i.e. a
> parser) might beat a bunch of passes with simple pattern match searches. It
> also seems possible the intersection of the bioinformatics wizards with the
> advanced parser wizards is almost an empty set.
> 
> Smalltalk is just super good at implementing fancy algorithms. I guess a
> question to ask: is it REALLY a very serious number cruncher problem, or is
> that just what current algorithms end up being.

Yes, it's a good question. It's so very easy to merrily jog down the old
path (especially if the prevailing culture is C or Lisp -- not that I've
got anything against either of them) without stopping to see if there is
another way of doing it.

Cheers

John (who knows very little about either algorithms or Bioinformatics)

 
-- 
Can't cope anymore? Desperate for help?
Join the 12 step program for those who yearn to give up Microsoft:
http://home.earthlink.net/~penguinrox/index.html