Rosalind and Coursera
Rosalind: learning bioinformatics through problem solvingCoursera: on-line education from top universities
Friday October 12th 2012BioAssist programmers meetingFreek de Bruijn (NBIC)
Warning
• Rosalind and/or Coursera may cause serious fun• NBIC is not responsible for any addictions you acquire...
Rosalind: how I got trapped
Rosalind: short overview
• what:– learning bioinformatics through problem solving– real challenges from molecular biology– use your favorite programming language– solutions are checked automatically– name commemorates Rosalind Franklin
• when: since July 2012, beta, seems stable• who: team from University of California at San Diego and
Saint Petersburg Academic University• where: rosalind.info
• warning: short problems with biological background, quick gratification, highly addictive!
Rosalind: quick demo
Rosalind: get ahead of the curve
• Early adopters are already busy solving those challenges, so get a piece of the action now!
Coursera: how I got trapped
Coursera: short overview
• what:– education technology company– collaboration with 33 universities– many fields like computer science, biology and
mathematics– > 1 million students from 196 countries have
enrolled– received $16 million of venture capital
• when: since April 2012, public beta, seems stable• who: computer scientists Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller• where: coursera.org
• warning: longer courses on lots of subjects, official certificate after completion, highly addictive!
Coursera: a Scala course
• Scala is a great new general purpose programming language combining object oriented and functional programming
• Scala is designed to express common programming patterns in a concise, elegant, and type-safe way
• Scala is statically typed and has type inference• Scala is used by LinkedIn, EDFT, Twitter, Novell, the
Guardian, Xebia, Xerox, FourSquare, Sony, Siemens and many others
• Martin Odersky is the main designer of the language• He built the current generation of javac, the Java compilerHe is currently teaching a course on functional programming in
Scala!
Coursera: quick demo
Similar projects
• Project Euler: http://projecteuler.net/problems• Khan Academy: khanacademy.org• Codecademy: http://www.codecademy.com/about• Code Jam: http://code.google.com/codejam/contests.html• Class Central: http://www.class-central.com/#learnmoregives overview of courses from Coursera, Udacity and edX
warning: one extra day of time per week might not be enough, highly addictive!
Yet another warning
• Be careful with these so called “social networks” like Google+, Twitter and Facebook because new addictions can strike at any moment... ;-)