Tag Archives: academic

Entering into bioinformatics

As of now, I have been working with bioinformatics in the Mizuguchi lab at NIBIO, Osaka, for about two weeks. The lab environment is stimulating and I feel quite fortunate to be here. It is interesting to compare computer science and bioinformatics with just the hindsight of this short period. In computer science and electronics, […]

My Ph.D. Thesis: “Extending the Java Programming Language for Evolvable Component Integration”

After three very hectic first months of 2012, the final version of my Ph.D. thesis has been submitted and I’ve gone through the graduation ceremonies. From the 1st of April I will be a postdoctoral associate in bioinformatics at the National Institute of Biomedical Innovation in Osaka, Japan. I will comment further on my Ph.D. […]

What makes a good programming language?

New programming languages are released all the time. History is littered with dead ones. There are also many long time survivors in good shape, as well as geriatric languages on life support. What makes a programming language attractive and competitive? How can we evaluate its quality? There are many different aspects of this problem. Ease […]

Pointers in programming languages

It is likely that few features cause as much problems as pointers and references in statement-oriented languages, such as C, C++ and Java. They are powerful, yes, and they allow us to control quite precisely how a program is to represent something. We can use them to conveniently compose objects and data without the redundancy […]

Assessing research quality

Academic research is difficult to evaluate. In order to know the significance of an article, a result or an experiment, one must know a lot about the relevant field. It is probably fair to say that few people read research articles in great depth unless they work in exactly the area the article is in. […]