[ElecEngineer2017]

Hi there,

I'm new to the forum, thanks for having me. I'm coming from a computer programming background, specifically C++. My question was is there anyone here that could tell me if chemistry and programming concepts have any overlap?

[Irlanur]

The most obvious things are Molecular Dynamics simulations and Computational Chemistry. But also Data Processing becomes more and more important (e.g. modern NMR would be impossible without the fast cooley-turkey algorithm.)

[orgo814]

Not a lot... good computer skills may help you in the lab when dealing with instruments but chemical theory is not even close to computer science. As someone mentioned, computational chemistry is a field where a computing background is very helpful. However, a background in

[TyPie]

Yes, they do overlap and can be very useful imo.  If you look at python.org, there are recommendations from various chemical companies that use chemistry for drug design. 

Chemical engineers often times will use some programming to show how different processes will change with various chemical or physical changes.

In electrochemistry one may want to diffuse a various chemical into a sheet of metal, so they might write a program that shows how the atoms or molecules might interact or diffuse.

[mjc123]

How about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_computing

[rius]

In chemical area which is about chemical engineering then yes, there are lots of software around it. But in chemistry for lab, not much programs are using for maintaining, only word, powerpoint and excel are enough for simply reporting analysis or presenting your chemistry thesis...

[Arkcon]

In chemical area which is about chemical engineering then yes, there are lots of software around it. But in chemistry for lab, not much programs are using for maintaining, only word, powerpoint and excel are enough for simply reporting analysis or presenting your chemistry thesis...

Likewise, there's also laboratory information software, and electronic laboratory notebooks, meant to chronicle experiments in an on-line searchable format for simplifying data searches.  One company I worked for had an ELN, but the programmers couldn't understand -- they wanted to be able to enter chemical structures, and search for them across the network.  To see who was investigating similar compounds, and prevent redundant work.  This is important for a pharmaceutical company, and went completely over the head of the programmers.