2026
The skeptic’s guide to generative AI assisted coding
Rob Patro February 15, 2026
OK; it’s not really a guide, but I needed a good title, this is more a story about how, and why, my perspective on AI assisted coding has evolved.
Since the AI-assisted coding hype began, I have been an outspoken skeptic of these technologies. In large part, this was due to my own experience with the early models. While I am a techie, I am very much deliberate in how I adopt and use technology. I love useful tech that makes my life easier, and lets me accomplish more of my goals. However…
2022
Why use Rust for bioinformatics? Part 2: You can depend on me.
Rob Patro November 28, 2022
For part 2 in our “Why use Rust in bioinformatics?” series, I want to focus on one of my favorite parts of the Rust ecosystem, Cargo. In fact, there is so much to like about Cargo, that I won’t even be able to cover that in a single post. Instead, I’ll focus in this post mostly on the use of Cargo for dependency management and will likely return later to some of my favorite cargo commands / plugins (like clippy).
What is Cargo?
Cargo is the package manager for Rust and, more than that, it’s…
Why use Rust for bioinformatics? Part 1: Defining the problem space.
Rob Patro November 25, 2022
As has been well noted on the interwebs, I am a staunch advocate of the Rust programming language. This is particularly true in my home domain of bioinformatics and computational biology. In fact, so persistent am I in my advocacy for the use of Rust in bioinformatics applications that some of my colleagues have claimed I am an overfit bot.
So, an obvious question a reader may ask is “why?”. Why am I so zealous in my advocacy for Rust and its use in Bioinformatics? What benefits do I th…