@Rufus_III The entire point of taking the Java class is to give you a programming background to push you further into specialization. You won't be more "well rounded," rather you will be more suited for questions that might be asked from a bioinformatics perspective that it seems your standard curriculum is lacking. An institute like TGen might not be looking for general studies in biotechnology because honestly the overlap between the type of assays and genetic sequencing you do has significant overlap with other fields like biochemistry, biology, chemistry, and microbiology. In other words, it is likely that they have many student interns or graduate interns who apply for internships who can do basic laboratory bench work.
However, having someone who understands the framework e.g. what is the basis of BLAST and how does it incorporate PERL/Python elements in order to establish data patterns? Are you familiar with using biopython or BioPerl, in which cases have you used it for research or for homework and can you tell me of a situation where it would be appropriate? How familiar are you with a base language whether it is Java, Perl, or Python and if I were to make a back-end request would you feel comfortable with doing it for me? These are fundamentally questions that a new grad who followed your biotechnology program probably couldn't answer unless they already had significant interest in CS or computer science from the get go. However, they highlight areas in which bioinformatics (a subset of biotechnology) can be fundamentally different from a lot of overlapping majors.
