July 2012 Archives

The Quantified Onion is not just another echo chamber

In tandem with the creation of perl4science.github.com, gizmo_mathboy created a new google group called The Quantified Onion. Both of these web properties are meant to give greater visibility to Perl's role in science, and to spread the word to newcomers that Perl is a great language for scientific computing and data analysis.

It doesn't take long to realize that The Quantified Onion could easily slip into becoming just another room in the Perl echo chamber, a forum-based extension to blogs.perl.org with a scientific bent. If our goal had been to create a space for Perl scientists to hang out, this might be acceptable. However, I am convinced that Perl needs to get itself out of the lonesome offices and into the halls of academia. We have to grab the interest of undergraduates and graduate students doing science. Heck, I'll even take a postdoc or professor if I can get their attention. How do we achieve this?

We put on workshops for scientists and engineers.

About David Mertens

user-pic This is my blog about numerical computing with Perl.