Coding as a Biologist

Coding is becoming an integral skill in biology that is valuable for all students. Modern biological research requires most researchers to deal with staggering amounts of data (i.e. genomic, occurrence, etc).

Python is just one of many coding languages that you may encounter as a student or researcher in biology. Learning any coding language will make it easier to learn another, so there is no 'perfect' language to start with. Python has a number of things to recommend it: - consistent, highly readable syntax - many built-in libraries that help you achieve common tasks - intuitive syntax and design allows you to start writing functions and programs quickly - widely used, which means there are many resources available to help you when you're stuck - widely used by the scientific community, which means that many specialty packages that perform specific analyses or __ specific to biological research are built using Python (including shadie, which will come up a lot on this site) - integrates easily with existing tools

This section details how to install Python on your computer and start to download packages. 'Miniconda' is a version of Python that does not come with any pre-installed packages - this means that you will likely have to install many packages early on, but you will not have any packages taking up space on your computer that you don't need. If you followed different instructions for installing Python that told you to install 'Anaconda', this is perfectly fine- this version of Python comes with many useful pre-installed packages.

If you're feeling a little overwhelmed, that's perfectly fine! It's going to feel like being thrown into the deep end for a little bit. If you're raring to get started, here is a self-guided online Python Tutorial geared towards biologists.