Are bioinformatics challenges from ROSALIND welcome?

Question

Code for programming challenges, such as Project Euler, is apparently welcome on codereview and the respective tags exist.

Would it be considered on-topic to post solutions to problem sets from bioinformatics/computational biology, as given on ROSALIND?

Possible arguments against it could be:

1. Some challenges are not fully language-agnostic, but require specific framework, such as biopython.

2. Some challenges can't be tackled without a partial shift in focus: you have to think about the biological aspect of of the problem too.

I think that solutions to ROSALIND? challenges are worth to be discussed on codereview, but before I start to post any, I'd like to get a general consent from the folks here.

Answer 1

Programming Challenges of any kind are accepted on Code Review, as long as they include code!

We often have people post challenges from sites like CodeEval, Project Euler and many others.

Additionally they don't need to support every language, just one is fine.

However, our Reviewers do require a challenge description in the post in case the link ever rots.

Answer 2

A search for is:question [bioinformatics] rosalind shows that there are already three questions. Go ahead and post your code for review.

Answer 3

Yes, they are very welcome. I'm personally a big fan of getting as much different frameworks as possible represented on Code Review and we have no rules against exotic variants.

To address your concerns:

Some challenges are not fully language-agnostic, but require specific framework, such as biopython.

Many real-world problems are not language-agnostic in that sense. One of the first things a programmer should realize is one should always use the right tool for the job. Regardless of whether that tool turns out to be C++, JavaScript, COBOL, Grails or Python. If your tool needs a specific environment, so be it.

It can't hurt to explicitly state what frameworks/environments are required to run the code. In some cases it's even required. Don't forget a description of what problem your code solves is also very important.

Some challenges can't be tackled without a partial shift in focus: you have to think about the biological aspect of of the problem too.

While this is true for writing the code, don't be alarmed if the answers will not touch this specific problem. Answers on Code Review are allowed to be about any and all aspects of the code, regardless of their priority. Of course, answers giving you exactly what you need are preferred and are usually (or at least should be) higher scoring.

Code Review is not about what you want. It's about what you get.

If you still have doubts, take a look at the following tags. We don't discriminate based on language.

assembly vhdl tis-100 brainfuck lolcode unity3d cmake