[BiO BB] How to write Algorithm

John S. J. Anderson jacobs at genehack.org
Wed Sep 26 08:35:30 EDT 2001


Indraneel Majumdar <indraneel at indialine.org> writes:

> And what about Donald Knuth's books? The Art Of Computer Programming
> (TAOCP)?

Great minds think alike. 8^)=

> There is a very nice O'reilly book: Developing Bioinformatics
> Computer Skills

I wouldn't really recommend this for reading about algorithms -- there
wasn't really any in-depth stuff in this book IIRC. (The book is still
good for what it is -- it's just not a book about bioinfo algorithms.)

> And talking about algorithms, I think data structures come first. One
> can try this:
> Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs
> by Nicklaus Wirth

If you're a Perl programmer, especially a Perl programmer of the "I
used to be a biologist but now I do Perl even though I never had a
programming class in my life" variety, you should read chapters two
and three of the ORA _Mastering Algorithms with Perl_ book, which
discuss the implementation of some of the classic data structures
(heaps, B trees, stack/queues/deques, etc.) in Perl. You will learn a
staggering amount.

john.
-- 
Unix is like a toll road on which you have to stop every 50 feet to
pay another nickel.  But hey!  You only feel 5 cents poorer each time.
             -- Larry Wall in <1992Aug13.192357.15731 at netlabs.com>




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