Bioinformatics Zen

Browsing wikiomics, I found this small section on keeping organised as a practising bioinformatician. In particular these lines contain gems of information.

• Use text files/plain e-mail whenever possible
• Give meaningful names to your files
• Create separate folders/directories for each project with meaningful names

I find keeping my work organised one of the most frustrating but necessary tasks of being a bioinformatician. Also this subject seems to recieve little attention in the bioinformatics community.

Wet scientists are expected to keep laboratory books. Where not doing so considered very bad practice. I am jealous when I see these books filled with pictures of gels and printed tables of results. I’ve tried using a lab book, but I didn’t find it applicable for the many different types of scripts and results I was producing.

Here are some tips I find useful for organising myself.

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