Object Oriented Programming in Parallel ScientificComputing An Overview of the Special Issue Boleslaw K. SzymAnski and Charles D. Norton Guest Editors Dep.axtment of Computer Science Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, New York, 12180-3590, U S A The State of Object Oriented Scientific Computing There is little argument that the progr~mmlug of scientific applications, particularly on distributed memory parallel machines, remai,.q difficult. Scientists are still productive, but this productivity comes at the high cost of designing and developing applications t h a t are hard to maintain, modify, share with collaborators, explain and scale to larger problems. Many of these challenges stem from applying languages and techniques t h a t do not promote abstraction in programming. The human cognitive ability to unify and generalize detailed concepts into abstract representations is the most powerful tool available in scientific and engineering disciplines. Unfortunately, we have not yet been successful in transferring this technique into our general application development process. Programming, via abstraction, is not common practice. One of the most promising areas of opportunity to address abstraction in scientific programming involves object oriented technology. The advanced techniques and methodologies of this approach can bring coherency to the design and programming process.
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