DNA seen through the eyes of a coder
I find the coding analogy for DNA or cell biology in general to be rather problematic. It&#x27;s fine as a very rough and oversimplified analogy, but if you try to apply it to the details I think it hurts more than it helps.<p>And important aspect of biology is that it is really much more analog than digital in many areas. Many interactions are not entirely on&#x2F;off, and they are influenced by a lot of other factors in the environment of the cell. This is a part that really doesn&#x27;t match well to how people understand coding. The digital aspects are also inherently coupled to their physical representations. That are not just four letters A, C, T, G in the DNA, each of them also has different chemical and physical properties.<p>Some analogies to coding concepts work quite well, but you really have to be aware of the limitations. And I often see computer scientists trying to use these analogies to understand certain parts of biology, but inevitably they will move out of the bounds of where the anlogy works unless they actually know the underlying biology.