f2pypy

I posted about f2pypy my mini-project to make a new backend to f2py which generates a ctypes-based extension module for Python. The goal is to see if that is a viable path for PyPy support of the existing shared libraries already wrapped by f2py. I think it is.

Feel free to comment!

Where free software and peer-review software differ

In this essay I point out while free software and scientific peer-review have many characteristics in common, they come from different philosophies. There are requirements for free software (free ability to redistribute modified code to anyone) which are not essential to effective peer review, and there are requirements for effective peer review (getting access to the source code in order to evaluate it) which are directly contrary to the free software ideals of the GNU project (which lets you distribute free software for any price you may wish).

Here is the place to leave comments about that essay.

Code review

I believe the literature shows that code review is a effective way to find defects in software and to promote knowledge transfer. I think it's easier to put into place than pair programming. Unfortunately it's also socially stressful.

In my essay on code review I outline some of ways I've done code review and some reasons that people don't do it.

I want to promote the use of code review in general, and also more specifically in cheminformatics. I'm not sure how. I described a few in that essay. If you have more, let me know.

Dealing with SSSR

Here's the place to leave comments about my "Dealing with SSSR" article. In it I describe my experience in trying to develop a toolkit-indendent means of specifying some of the PubChem bits which require ESSSR. I concluded saying that I couldn't - without reimplementing ESSSR myself for each toolkit - handle those bits so I would be ignoring them.

I also wondered why people use SSSR, and how well they've tested their SSSR-based algorithms, including testing in the face of differing atom order.

Implementing the CACTVS/PubChem substructure keys

Here's the place to leave comments about my rather lengthy article on the problems I ran into while implementing the PubChem/CACTVS substructure keys, with background, pointers to the MACCS definitions, and other chunky nuggets of feature key wisdom.

subgraph enumeration

I've started a series on subgraph enumeration. In Part 1 I present a brute force enumeration algorithm, modify it to remove duplicates, and post-process the results to generate canonical SMARTS for each subgraph. In Part 2 I develop a new algorithm which is about 3.5 times faster.