Using computer algebra systems in the development of scientific computer codes

Abstract

During the first years of the computer era no tools were available to aid scientists in the development of their computer codes. Code production was a pretty handicraft job. The last years have seen the resurgence of many concepts whose aim is to reduce the man effort in building scientific systems. These ideas spread from the reusable component concept to the multi-purpose problem-solving environment (PSE). This paper presents an approach that takes all the power of computer algebra systems (CASs) to easily specify a scientific problem solver and to automatically generate a computer program in standard language (as Fortran or C) that implements it. An application using a well-known CAS, Mathematica, is presented to show the methodology.