Programming in Science: Relevance and Demand

Programming is often mentioned in an applied context. It seems to be used only to create mobile applications, Internet systems and special effects for movies. But programming was originally intended for solving scientific problems. In addition, programming itself is a science, which will be useful for those who decide to pursue a career in computer development.

Scientific programming is a highly oriented style of programming for scientific calculations. It is distinguished from other types of programming by extreme correctness and stability of the final product, strict separation of scientific and interface parts, individuality of algorithms, and predominance of efficiency over universality.

Scientific programming is at the heart of any modern global research. All advanced technologies – from quantum computers to space programs – would not be possible without specialists in scientific programming, who can provide scientists with reliable and accurate tools for making discoveries.

A number of branches of science directly depend on the level of development of scientific programming. For example, unmanned transportation, “smart” systems of urban and agricultural management, stock exchanges, robotics, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence that surpasses human capabilities are waiting for their fulfillment.

Specializations

Scientists use a variety of programming languages, the choice of which depends on the type of problem and the author’s preferences. Historically, the first high-level programming language is Fortran; many well-established libraries for mathematical statistics and libraries for solving differential equations have been written in Fortran, which is relevant to economics and biology, respectively.

A simpler syntax has Python, also suitable for programming mathematical computations. Python language is used for data processing in mathematics, physics, economics, biology, chemistry and can work with some other “scientific” languages: Fortran, C++, C#.

In turn, C# allows programming on the .NET platform, adapting a program to a common language runtime (CLR) and speeding up development in operational scientific sessions.