[fghh45sdfhr3]

If you have a CS degree and you get into Bioinformatics by reading books about it... you're dipping your toes into it.

If on the other hand you go ahead and get another degree then you're taking things to heart.

In other words, bioinformatics programming is easy for programmers. Biology is not. If you want to be a hero, really go for it!

[tomharrigan]

Right on. I see your point. Part of what I'm doing is taking some of the MIT OpenCourseWare classes, which yes, is mostly reading, but that seems to be a lot of what getting another degree would consist of, though without the research portion. A lot of it is that I'd really like to understand what I'm programming, why I'm programming it and how it's benefitting the community. I think having that knowledge allows you to look at the problems with much better sight and see those things that you might not think of or overlook otherwise.