I need some consultation!

[Psyentist]

Hello all!

I'm a physical scientist who is looking to merge life science with computer science. Let me explain: I want to write a program that'll simulate chemical/ biochemical reactions. I'm looking to make this program as meticulous as possible by coding every element of a virtual compound as if it were a real world element.

I need help getting started. I have taken course work in programming C and I know a bit about C++. However, this program needs to present reactions graphically and my programming ability is limits to doing simple C programs that one would learn in a intro to C class. Can one of you guru point me in the right direction? I'm a big Ubuntu fan, so I'd like to code with one of its software packages.

Thanks in advance, folks.

[CornedBee]

Look for GTK tutorials. GTK is the primary graphics library of Gnome, which is what Ubuntu uses as the desktop environment. (The other popular Linux DE is KDE with the Qt toolkit, used by Kubuntu.)

[abachler]

Ive worked on a similar project in the past, just a heads up, to accurately model chemical reactions for anything more complex than simple reactions you WILL have to model sub-atomic interactions.

[matsp]

As abachler says, you need to understand what happens WITHIN atoms to replicate the interactions between molecules. Further, it is a HUGE project to model this with any accuracy. I once worked with a comercial software package for something like this (trying to find out why a customers results where different between our processor and a competitors processor - but it turned out that the latest version didn't have the same problem that the customers version, so an upgrade solved the problem), and it was VERY comprehensive, but also extremely expensive.

I'd say it's a rather much for one person to solve, unless you are really skilled at both the programming of mathematics and the graphics that you need to display the results.

--
Mats

[lruc]

Look for GTK tutorials. GTK is the primary graphics library of Gnome, which is what Ubuntu uses as the desktop environment. (The other popular Linux DE is KDE with the Qt toolkit, used by Kubuntu.)

I actually think sdl would be more suitable for this. A little more to the point than GTK+. Just a personal recommendation though.

[zacs7]

> I actually think sdl would be more suitable for this. A little more to the point than GTK+. Just a personal recommendation though.
I disagree. GTK+ will give you a lot of "front-end" stuff, not to mention use of glib. And if you require any real graphics other than using GtkCanvas then you can embed OpenGL.

[lruc]

In the end it will depend on how much gui he plans on including. It sounded to me like he needed a more free-draw api like sdl, but it's his choice.