I regularly teach a college course in a physics department that deals with scientific computation. After students take the course, I expect that they'll be able to write simple "c-tran" style programs for data analysis, write basic MD or MC simulations, and be fairly fluent in Mathematica.
<br><br>In the past, I figured that with the breadth of topics included in the course, Fortran, specifically the basic, simple, and reliable F77 dialect (w/ some F90 conveniences) was the language to teach. In my own head, my rationale was:
<br>- Most students can grasp the basics of fortran in half a day's reading, so I can spend more class time on science and math (probably because there are no pointers - I think that C is much harder for students and sometimes "seems" less like mathematical syntax than f77)
<br>- "Classical Fortran" is a great text and is readable for self-study (I know of no such text for C/C++)<br>- several free compilers exist (g95 seems ok so far)<br>- Netlib, lapack, and numerical recipes cover the math library adequately
<br>- F77 is compiled (Perl/python are too slow for an MD/MC sim and I figure that students should know at least on compiled language and one scripting language to be competent)<br>- MPI is a relatively basic addition to the language (again, no pointers, allocation, or addressing)
<br clear="all"><br>After reflection though, I've started to wonder about the wisdom of my choice. Specifically (like RGB), I love the GSL library, and extending GSL to fortran in an intro class is non-trivial. Additionally, most vendors supply "fast" hardware libraries in C (I may be ignorant, but if a student wants to call an AMD ACML fast-math function(
<a href="http://developer.amd.com/acml.jsp">http://developer.amd.com/acml.jsp</a>), or write a linear algebra function to run on a graphics card(<a href="http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cuda.html">http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cuda.html
</a>), the vendors seem to assume that you'll write the code in C). <br><br>Also, and more relevant, I assume that most employers word-associate "Fortran is to backwards as C is to competence".<br><br>So, I'm thinking about reworking the class to favor C, and fearing 3 weeks of pointer and addressing hell. For those of you who teach scientific computation (and also those of you who hire undergrads), I'd be grateful for your thoughts. One specific question I have is what text covers scientific programming and touches on MPI using the C language.
<br><br>regards,<br><br>Nathan Moore<br><br> <br>-- <br>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - <br>Nathan Moore<br>Assistant Professor, Physics<br>Winona State University<br>AIM: nmoorewsu <br>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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