A survey of the practice of computational science

Abstract

Computing plays an indispensable role in scientific research. Presently, researchers in science have different problems, needs, and beliefs about computation than professional programmers. In order to accelerate the progress of science, computer scientists must understand these problems, needs, and beliefs. To this end, this paper presents a survey of scientists from diverse disciplines, practicing computational science at a doctoral-granting university with very high research activity. The survey covers many things, among them, prevalent programming practices within this scientific community, the importance of computational power in different fields, use of tools to enhance performance and software productivity, computational resources leveraged, and prevalence of parallel computation. The results reveal several patterns that suggest interesting avenues to bridge the gap between scientific researchers and programming tools developers.