Mixing Languages in Scientific Codes

Speaker: David Bindel (Cornell University)

Overview


Mixing Languages in Scientific Codes


Presentation courtesy of David Bindel.

Abstract:

Different languages are favored by different computational scientists for good reason: Fortran for legacy and speed, C/C++ for large frameworks and fast kernels, Julia and MATLAB and Python and R for their array syntax and ease of use. But when your simulation framework is in C++, you want to call some old solvers written in Fortran, and the student working with you mostly knows Python or MATLAB, how can you manage it all? In this talk, we discuss some techniques and challenges of mixed language programming, with a particular emphasis on “front-end / back-end” combinations where high-level logic is written in a language like MATLAB or Python and the computational kernels are written in a compiled language.