Haskell, iPhone and Biotech

Posted by alpheccar - Aug 06 2008 at 19:21 CEST

I have been so busy on so many topics that I have not been able to update this blog for a while. In addition to my job, I have had some fun with Haskell, iPhone and biotechnology.

Haskell

With Haskell, I continued to work on my web framework for fun. I integrated it with jquery and started some work with SproutCore. I like SproutCore a lot. I improved on my WebObject system which is now working very well with jquery. It allowed me to write some cool form validation framework.

But, don't ask, I won't release the source ! It is an experiment to learn and I have not made any effort to have a clean and elegant code.

iPhone

I could not resist. I started developing on the iPhone using the official SDK. I was accepted in the beta program very early and now have two free applications on the iTunes AppStore. I know that lots of people are saying it is difficult to be accepted in the program (less now than a few months ago) and difficult to have applications accepted on the store. My experience is that it is not true at all. But of course, you cannot generalize from my experience alone. Before, I had developed on many other mobile platforms (because of my job) and I can clearly say that this new SDK makes a BIG difference. What a pleasure it is !

I created a blog very recently to allow my users to ask questions because the comments on iTunes are useful but it is not enough for the developer.

Of course nothing is perfect. There are still many issues but it is also a very young system so let's be patient.

And, my applications are a bit lame :-) I waited until the last minute (before the launch of the AppStore) because I did not want to install a beta firmware on my phone. So, I had to develop quickly.

Biotechnology

Twice this year I crossed the road of the biotech industry. A few weeks ago because one of my friends decided to leave the company to join a biotech one not far. So, of course, during the past weeks I got interested again in this huge and very complex domain. I found some really great papers and was surprised that category theory is not something totally foreign to biologists. If only I could get a copy of the book Anticipatory Systems by Robert Rosen.

In the meantime, I try to learn Rosen's work from the Panmere blog.

Rant

Now that I have experimented with the iPhone I wonder if I could find a useful idea for biotech ? And if I had a ghc able to cross compile to ARM then I may write the core algorithms with it instead of using ObjectiveC that I would keep for the GUI only. We will see ...

Tags iphone | biotech | haskell