skip to main content
10.1145/2638404.2638488acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication Pagesacm-seConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

A programming language for implementing computational models

Published: 28 March 2014 Publication History

Abstract

The Scientific Computation Language (SCL) was designed mainly for developing computational models in education and research. This paper presents the justification for such a language, its relevant features, and a case study of a computational model implemented with the SCL.
Development of the SCL language is part of the OOPsim project, which has had partial NSF support (CPATH). One of the goals of this project is to develop tools and approaches for designing and implementing computational models, emphasizing multi-disciplinary teams in the development process.
A computational model is a computer implementation of the solution to a (scientific) problem for which a mathematical representation has been formulated. Developing a computational model consists of applying Computer Science concepts, principles and methods.
The language syntax is defined at a higher level of abstraction than C, and includes language statements for improving program readability, debugging, maintenance, and correctness. The language design was influenced by Ada, Pascal, Eiffel, Java, C, and C++.
The keywords have been added to maintain full compatibility with C. The SCL language translator is an executable program that is implemented as a one-pass language processor that generates C source code. The generated code can be integrated conveniently with any C and/or C++ library, on Linux and Windows (and MacOS). The semantics of SCL is informally defined to be the same C semantics.

References

[1]
Nell, Dale, John A. McCormick, and Chip Weems. Programming And Problem Solving With Ada95. Second Ed. Jones and Bartlett, Sudbury, MA, 2006.
[2]
José M. Garrido. Elementary Computational Modeling: Essential Concepts, Principles, and Problem Solving. CRC Press/Chapman & Hall, Boca Raton FL, 2012.
[3]
Garrido, José M. Computational Models: Conceptualization and Implementation with C and GSL. In Proceedings of the 51st ACM Southeast Conference 2013. Savannah, Georgia. March 14--16, 2013.
[4]
Garrido, José M. Introduction to Computational Modeling Using C and Open-Source Tools. CRC Press, Boca Raton FL, 2014.
[5]
S. Hambrush, C. Hoffman, J T. Korb, M. Haugan, and A. L. Hosking. "Multidisciplinary Approach Towards Computational Thinking for Science Majors". SIGCSE'09, March 2009, Chattanooga, TN.
[6]
Meyer, Bertrand. Eiffel: The Language. Prentice Hall International, Hemel Hemstead, 1992.
[7]
Savitch, Walter. Problem Solving with C++: The Object of Programming. Fourth Edition. Addison Wesley Pearson, 2003.
[8]
Stewart, G. W. MATRAN: A Matrix Wrapper for Fortran 95 Department of Computer Science, Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Maryland http://www.cs.umd.edu/stewart/matran
[9]
Peter Turner and Linda Petzoid. "Undergraduate Computational Science and Engineering Education". SIAM Working Group on CSE Undergraduate Education. Siam Review. Vol. 53, pp. 561--574. 2007.
[10]
Charles F. Van Loan and K.-Y. Daisy Fan. Insight Through Computing: A MATLAB Introduction to Computational Science and Engineering. SIAM Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 2009.
[11]
Wolfgang Wiechert. "The Role of modeling in Computational Science Education". Future Generation Computer Systems. Vol. 19, pp. 1363--1374. Elsevier 2003.
[12]
Jeannette M. Wing. "Computational Thinking". Communications of the ACM. March 2006. Vol. 49, No. 3.

Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Analysis of programming languages used in solving energy problemsE3S Web of Conferences10.1051/e3sconf/202235401006354(01006)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2022
  • (2017)Improving Software Development for Embedded SystemsProceedings of the 2017 ACM Southeast Conference10.1145/3077286.3077318(231-234)Online publication date: 13-Apr-2017

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
ACMSE '14: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM Southeast Conference
March 2014
265 pages
ISBN:9781450329231
DOI:10.1145/2638404
  • Conference Chair:
  • Ken Hoganson,
  • Program Chair:
  • Selena He
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 28 March 2014

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. computational methods
  2. language translation
  3. models
  4. scientific computing
  5. specification
  6. structured programming

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Conference

ACM SE '14
ACM SE '14: ACM Southeast Regional Conference 2014
March 28 - 29, 2014
Georgia, Kennesaw

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 502 of 1,023 submissions, 49%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)1
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 17 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Analysis of programming languages used in solving energy problemsE3S Web of Conferences10.1051/e3sconf/202235401006354(01006)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2022
  • (2017)Improving Software Development for Embedded SystemsProceedings of the 2017 ACM Southeast Conference10.1145/3077286.3077318(231-234)Online publication date: 13-Apr-2017

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media