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Writing Genetic Code
An anonymous reader writes "The Globe and Mail is reporting on another group of researchers delving into the field of 'synthetic biology.' The project stemming from the efforts of two biology labs in British Columbia and Maryland is attempting to create the first synthetic life form. From the article: 'The project is being spearheaded by U.S. scientist Craig Venter, who gained fame in his former job as head of Celera Genomics, which completed a privately-owned map of the human genome in 2000. Dr. Venter, 59, has since shifted his focus from determining the chemical sequences that encode life to trying to design and build it: "We're going from reading to writing the genetic code," he said in an interview.'" This is certainly not the first group to venture into this territory.
... welcome our new two-codon overlords.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
There you go, no more bitching about which is the best coding language, now you can code in the most natural one.
I hope there is a gcc backend for this. I hate using Visual Studio to write my code.
...biology programs you!
I've seen WAY too many sci-fi movies to consider this a good scientific endeavor. If you need me, I'll be in my concrete bunker. :)
Genetics code YOU!
Oh wait... they do...
Carry on.
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
Forget 'curing disease', that's not the future of the species, what we need are perfect blondes and supermodels.
Seriously, are we going to have both propriatory as well as free genetic code organisms? What's the legal status of a living being that's a result/offspring of a crossing/mating between a propriatory and a GPL organism?
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
how the @#$! are you going to debug it?
Remember all those stuffed suits who said that the GPL was viral? Just wait for their reaction when we prove them right!
"I'm sorry sir, but from now on your name ought to be GNU/Mr. Jones..."
"Frankenstien XML on Rails 101 for Dummies, with MySql."
Table-ized A.I.
You misspelled "Dr. Venture"
"Why is it every time I need to get somewhere, we get waylaid by jackassery?"
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
They're going to double freak when it's discovered that human genetics are made up of spagetti code!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Of course human genetics are made up of spaghetti code! We were all created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
they'll release their genetic code under the GPL, I'd really hate it if went all commercial.
Something tells me this code will be very vulnerable to viruses.
Warning: Could be fatal if taken seriously
Actually, no. If God didn't didn't mean us to create life he would let us do it, and then we would smite ourselves with our little new toys :)
Well, as a C++ programmer, I am quite used to hearing how C++ is evil because of all the things it can do. Therefore, I am as justified as they are in saying that C++ is better than genetic code for the following reasons:
Genetic code is too low-level. While C++ comes with a standard library defining containers, iterators, and common algorithms, in genetic code you have to do everything from scratch. In quaternary. With 3D objects. Talk about a learning curve!
Genetic code has no garbage collector, and not even a simple malloc. In fact, you have to write self-modifying code to avoid memory leaks or dangling references. This makes it very difficult for the beginning programmer to write good code, and encourages bad practices.
Genetic code is not object oriented. You have to do horrible hacks to encapsulate private information or define interfaces to it. Most programmers just use a "signals-and-slots" method to pass messages, resulting in spaghetti code rivaling the worst abuses of goto.
Genetic code is too flexible. If you thought bad C++ code was hard to understand due to operator overloading, wait 'till you see the things a bad programmer can do with genetics! And, while in C++ the worst that can happen is a crash, bad genetic code could eat you.
Genetic code takes longer to develop for. You have to write lots and lots of code to duplicate even the simplest C++ line. Furthermore, compilation times totally suck, approaching twenty years for complex programs!
Genetic code has an arcane syntax, leftover from the early days of evolution. Just imagine, we're still using constructs nearly three billion years old! If you thought having some C in C++ was bad, wait 'till you see the archean leftovers you are forced to use in your eukaryotic cells!
Genetic code is dynamically typed and favors the "duck typing" philosophy. This creates an enormous amount of security holes, where special ducks ("poisons") with appropriate appearance but malicious behaviour could be introduced into the system.
Genetic code is hard to debug. Having no debugger, one has to rely on contrived printf-like trace statements. Unlike printf, the genetic equivalents are limited in number and expressiveness, sometimes making it impossible to figure out what is wrong.
Genetic code is a bloated pig. Just imagine, you need trillions of bits to define a simple organism, while in C++ I can code NPCs in under a hundred lines of code.
Genetic code VM is slow. Perhaps not as slow as Java, but it still takes milliseconds to do even simple operations. We could all think so much faster if we were written in C++.