Programming language for computational science in future

[TrustInsight]

Hello everyone.

Which programming language do you think will dominate the computational world in this decade and thereafter? I know so far Fortran is the King in computational physics, but was curious to know which other languages (like C++, Python, Java, etc.) are in the trend of dominating the computational sciences.

 

[DavidSnider]

I don't think C++ is going anywhere, but I think functional programming languages will start playing a larger role.

 

[gsal]

I am with you on Fortran...it has been used within the sciences for a while and it has a lot of code out there.

Python with its popular numpy and scipy modules is also being used a lot in engineering and science for easily creating GUIs by not very good programmers (engineers and scientists, as opposed to a CS graduate), then came along matplotlib, enthought tool, etc.etc.

Yet, I don't know what's going to happen 10, 20 years from now..sure, Fortran will still be there :-) , but I think some people are starting to focus on programming for non-programmers, in other words, a programming language without a language at all...you would just dictate to the computer what you want to achieve and it will figure it out and implement it however it can.

 

[FredericGos]

Due to the way CPU's are evolving these days I'd definitely say one of the functional ones. I vote for Haskell.

 

[DavidSnider]

I think we will see a trend of imperative languages evolving to act more functional rather than pure functional languages gaining a lot of traction.

We can already see that happening with the .NET platform and things like LINQ.

 

[FredericGos]

I think we will see a trend of imperative languages evolving to act more functional rather than pure functional languages gaining a lot of traction.

We can already see that happening with the .NET platform and things like LINQ.

yeah, that's true. I don't really like that trend but yeah.