Speaker
Prof.
Michel Sanner
(The Scripps Research Institute)
Description
Understanding the amazingly complex biological systems sustaining life requires
integrating, analyzing and understanding huge amounts of data. Computers are the
tools of choice for such a task. However, profound knowledge of biology is needed
for analyzing the data and learning from it. It is impossible to foresee the
multitude of ways data can be visualized or computational methods can be combined
to test hypotheses and often, it is assumed that in order to use computers to their
full potential, scientists have to become programmers. We have explored the visual
programming paradigm as a way to empower scientists with the ability to
interactively program applications without having to worry about data structures or
syntactical details of a programming language (even as simple and clean as
Python). We have developed Vision: a software component that supports visual
programming, and written adapters exposing the functionality of many Python
packages in this environment. The concept of visual programming in not new
however, the interpretive nature of the Python language allows for powerful and
elegant solutions to many limitations witnessed in other similar tools. In this
paper we will present Vision, highlight fundamental differences with other tools,
and discuss benefits and challenges associated with this approach.
Primary author
Prof.
Michel Sanner
(The Scripps Research Institute)
