In article <3648F07D.4DA70F50 at cc.umanitoba.ca>, frist at cc.umanitoba.ca says...
>Now I have a question. Is there anybody
>out there actually doing real science
>on the NT platform -- and loving it?
>Maybe NT has some hidden charms that
>have been lost on me.
>
Hi Brian,
Very interesting post. I think that when it's all said and done, the major
factor in whether a particular program or operating system works for you is
whether or not it can do what you want done, without too much screwing around.
For example, in my lab we do a fair bit of mutagenesis and then farm out
confirmatory sequencing. The first time I got one of those sequencing files
back, I realized it was going to be a MAJOR pain to look at these by hand, so I
wrote a QuickBasic (version 4 to boot!) program that takes in sequencing files,
translates them and then spits out amino acid & nucleotide sequence files that
my sequence alignment software can read. Sure I'm still using a prehistoric
language to write code, but I'm doing so because it works, and it's not worth
my time to try and figure out Visual Basic or C++ [I'll bet my Chairman thinks
it's a better use of my time to write grants :-) ]. This program is running on
NT and I can't imagine it running any faster on any other operating system. So
to answer your question, you can do science on NT (although my type of mol.
bio. work is not nearly the most sophisticated). NT may not be the most
efficient operating system, and for comparison my Unix experience is limited,
but I am somehow blundering along.
So, looking forward to winter in Manitoba? I grew up in Toronto, and don't
miss the snow and ice storms one bit!
Cheers!
John
--
John Mihic, Ph.D.
Department of Physiology & Pharmacology
Wake Forest University School of Medicine
Winston-Salem, NC 27157-1083
