Practical Scientific Computing

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Introduction

Computers were initially developed with the intention to solve numerical problems for military applications. The programs were written in absolute numeric machine language and punched in paper tapes. The process of writing programs, scheduling the execution in a batch mode and collection of results was long and complex. This tedious process did not allow any room for making mistakes. The late 1950s saw the beginning of research into numerical linear algebra. The emergence of FORTRAN as a language for scientific computation triggered the development of matrix computation libraries, i.e., EISPACK, LINPACK. The availability of these libraries did not ease the process of writing programs. Programmers still had to go through the cycle ...