Programming is beautiful

To me, Computational Biology provides me with a way to understand the enormous beauty and rules governing this game that is life. I strive to uncover these rules because in understanding, we might more easily co-exist with nature, and help ourselves co-habitate, thereby living more harmouniously. Furthermore, I love solving puzzles. Throughout my game of life, I have felt the urge to share, and so I will do that here when needed. Coming from a very small town of Lebanon Indiana, I did not know much of what I found others did when moving up north. I want to share what I have learned to continue empowering and inspiring curiosity to uncover the rules to your game of life. This blog will be one way I achieve that. (Read on.)

I look forward to passing on neat ideas and action items I have found valuable in my roles as, for example,

• Ph.D. candidate in Computational Biology and Computer Science from Brown,
• Fulbright Association Board Member (2018-2020),
• AnitaB.org Board Member (2015-2017),
• woman in tech from the Midwestern U.S.,
• outreach and award creator (like helping start the international Student of Vision Award)
• polyglot (fluent French, Spanish, English; beginner Portuguese, Dutch) consumed by wanderlust
• Learning at Brown, Princeton, Vanderbilt, Harvard, and MIT Lincoln Laboratory

I will be succinct, and in my Ashley way, blunt but kind.

To begin, these are two articles and talks I enjoyed this week. These demonstrate to me two reasons programming is absolutely beautiful.

• A damn stupid thing to do. The origins of C:
  • arstechnica.com/features/2020/12/a-damn-stupid-thing-to-do-the-origins-of-c/
• Conway’s Game of Life:
  • en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life
  • www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U

Photo: A Gosper’s glider gun that creates gliders from Wikepedia’s ‘Conway’s Game of Life’