A practical and empirical approach for biologists who almost program. Finally we introduce our approach, based on participatory design and technical exploration. Computers are now widely used in molecular biology, e.g. to run simulations or sequence analysis and to test hypotheses against genetic databanks. Biology researchers not only need to use software that is currently available to them, but also to develop new programs or adapt existing ones.
Some biologists already write their own program and even release public software.
These users need a scaffolding environment to process their data themselves or to try simple ideas with greater ease. My purpose in this position paper is not to propose a new end-user language or programming environment for these users, but to explain why, according to my experience, this is a difficult problem. I have observed biologists programming in Scheme during a three months programming course where I helped them with practical exercises. By the end of the course, they were able do design algorithms and define data structures. After the course, however, it was very hard for them to apply what they had learned to real problems, and to build actual software.