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Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background
101–110 of 150 posts
Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
But they did say "many of them are idiots", which is similar and rather arrogant. I don't trust people who claim their colleagues and classmates are idiots. Dunning-Kruger effect and hubris being what they are.
But they did say "many of them are idiots", which is similar Similar, yes. But, at least to my mind, there's a pretty big jump from "many" to "most". But maybe that's just me. shrug
Mot really, many still sounds like more than 50%. That's a huge claim
Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background
#103The Bio tech seen is very credential focused. It is not like standard tech that often welcomes people with other experience. There are several likely reasons for this.
1. An over abundance of Bio Phd's. 2. Medicine in particular is tricky 3. Academics can be a$$Holes 4. They don't pay as well.
Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background
#104I'm a self-taught bio-informatician (working at large healthcare company, doing Next Generation Sequencing related things). although I am actively seeking to better myself, My code is horrible, we have one "library" (a file really) full of functions and since 2 months a couple of classes that I already feel like completely re-writing. A lot of code is in Jupyter Notebooks somewhere because we just got the hang of Git…
I love git. Literally the only way to be productive when you've got more than 4 people touching code.
Do you guys allow remote work?
Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background
#105Join Lucence. Our dry lab and wet lab work are world class and you will learn in the context of real problems for real patients with real samples. We are hiring in SF and Singapore for informatics roles.
contact info?
Email your CV and a paragraph on your interest to:
hr at lucencedx.com
Bonus points for citing our active jobs page: https://www.lucencedx.com/careers/
Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background
#106I'm curious who all these sarcastic bio "experts" are that are suggesting getting a PhD or hiring one. I'm a former bio major and researcher/scientist that transitioned to software engineering years ago. I've published papers in bio and worked with many PhDs. Many of them were idiots. Being a PhD doesn't mean anything, it's the independent work that you put in yourself (in an academic lab or by yourself) that determi…
> idiots
really idiots ? I'd be shocked if PhD were really lacking intelligence that much (even if you used the term as an hyperbole)
Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background
#107I have spent 11 years in molecular biology research.
I must warn you about a survivorship bias. All the exciting news you are hearing are the tip of a giant iceberg that rests on the mounts of a most dull and repetitive labor.
Here are some realities that nobody tells you:
1. There are only 3 operations done in experimental biology: liquid pipetting, opening/closing tubes and moving tubes between machines. 90% of protocols may be reduced to those operations.
2. Just to reproduce an already published work, you need 6 month of 10 hour/day work, performing those 3 operations from point 1. It took 5 years to reproduce just 18 molecular biology papers [https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/effort-to-reprodu...], while 1 out of 4 computer science papers can be reproduced in less than 30 minutes [http://reproducibility.cs.arizona.edu/].
3. It takes days, if not weeks, to perform an experiment and make an observation. That is, if you manage to make a mistake in your experiment at day 2, you will only learn that something went wrong at day 6. Often, it is even impossible to tell what went wrong.
3a. Imagine, that after days of coding, you hit "compile", and the compiler would find a typo you made somewhere in your code, and instead of pointing at the error, it would simply delete all your code, and never tell you what was the reason, so you have to start over writing the code from scratch. This is how day-to-day biology work looks like.
4. CRISPR technology is one of the most heavy on 3 operations from point 1.
5. If you ask biologists about how do they feel about doing experiments, 97 out of 100 will say they hate it the most and curse the day they decided to do biology.
Regarding starting a company, I would first try to talk to as many as possible industry people, trying to understand what they do day to day and what they find most problematic, difficult or annoying to do, and see what you need to do to solve their problem.
In fact, I so much hate the fact, that I spent 15 years studying, then 5 years doing PhD, just so I can spent the rest of my days pipetting liquid. I decided to try to automate away all manual work by creating a universal robotic framework. If you are interested, please check https://cartesianrobotics.xyz/
Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background
#108I'm curious who all these sarcastic bio "experts" are that are suggesting getting a PhD or hiring one. I'm a former bio major and researcher/scientist that transitioned to software engineering years ago. I've published papers in bio and worked with many PhDs. Many of them were idiots. Being a PhD doesn't mean anything, it's the independent work that you put in yourself (in an academic lab or by yourself) that determi…
[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background
#109I have a genetics phd and work as a bioinformatician. It takes time for concepts to fully "sink in" in biology. Learning one independent theory/fact/concept is great, but it is when you hook it up to all your other knowledge that it becomes powerful. I would read as much as you can, wait a month, then go back and re-read it. I promise you'll see and think about things you haven't before.
The utility, in my opinion, of a phd is that you had 4+ years where you were immersed in this environment and hopefully everything sunk in.
Biology is also not as black and white, cause and effect, strictly mechanistic as CS/engineering. Always think about exceptions and grey areas.
Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Looking things up for a specific topic is not even easy in biology How do you find info on bio topics right now?
Depends on how deep you want to go. You need to find out what people are working on, and you do this by searching on PubMed and talking to people working in that field.
This sounds similar to what my friends in academia describe while exploring their fields. They build an impressive repository of knowledge regarding who's working on different topics/subfields over time. This may be one advantage of pursuing a PhD. Would be cool to see someone make the process of acclimating to a new field more accessible.