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Preface
Computing, in the senseofdoingmathematicalcalculations, is a skill that mankind
has developed over thousands of years. Programming, on the other hand, is in
its infancy, with a history that spans a few decades only. Both topics are vastly
comprehensive and usually taught as separate subjects in educational institutions
around the world, especially at the undergraduate level. This book is about the
combinationof the two,becausecomputingtodaybecomessomuchmorepowerful
whencombinedwith programming.
Most universities and colleges implicitly require students to specialize in com-
puter science if they want to learn the craft of programming, since other student
programs usually do not offer programming to an extent demanded for really
mastering this craft. Common arguments claim that it is sufficient with a brief
introduction, that there is not enough room for learning programming in addition
to all other must-have subjects, and that there is so much software available that
fewreallyneed to programthemselves.A consequence is that engineeringstudents
often graduate with shallow knowledge about programming,unless they happened
tochoose thecomputer sciencedirection.
We think this is an unfortunate situation. There is no doubt that practicing
engineersand scientistsneed to knowtheirpen-and-papermathematics.Theymust
also be able to run off-the-shelf software for important standard tasks and will
certainly do that a lot. Nevertheless, the benefits of mastering programming are
many.
WhyLearnProgramming?
1. Ready-madesoftware is limited to handlingcertain standardproblems.What do
you do when the problem at hand is not covered by the software you bought?
Fortunately, a lot of modern software systems are extensible via programming.
In fact, many systems demand parts of the problem specification (e.g., material
models) tobe specifiedbycomputercode.
2. With programming skills, you may extend the flexibility of existing software
packagesby combining them. For example,you may integrate packages that do
notspeak toeachother fromtheoutset.Thismakes theworkflowsimpler,more
efficient, andmorereliable, and it putsyouina position toattacknewproblems.
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Programming for Computations β Python
A Gentle Introduction to Numerical Simulations with Python 3.6, Volume Second Edition
- Title
- Programming for Computations β Python
- Subtitle
- A Gentle Introduction to Numerical Simulations with Python 3.6
- Volume
- Second Edition
- Authors
- Svein Linge
- Hans Petter Langtangen
- Publisher
- Springer Open
- Date
- 2020
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-319-32428-9
- Size
- 17.8 x 25.4 cm
- Pages
- 356
- Keywords
- Programmiersprache, Informatik, programming language, functional, imperative, object-oriented, reflective
- Category
- Informatik