Java

Hello everyone,

I am working on a project related to helping the everyday researcher do his/her programming easier and faster.

I have done a fair amount of research work at OSU and have gotten a feel for the way they program on a daily basis, but realize that it could be and probably is drastically different on different parts of the planet. As such, I am here to ask the following questions (really, any opinion helps, so feel free to respond with whatever you want):

Ideally, this post of mine should carry a poll, but I guess as an ordinary user, I cannot insert one.

Currently, I am writing a small software program that is especially designed to help learn FEM. For instance, I will be providing detailed listings for every intermediate step, e.g. all those [D], [B], [k], etc. matrices for each element, as well as the final assembled global system {F} = [K]{d} and its solution separately at each Gauss point. Only linear static problems for the time being; will add transients/eigenvalue problems in near future.

In the past few days at iMechanica, there have been quite a few messages dealing with different aspects of programming, libraries and so on...

It would perhaps be timely, therefore, to ask:

Do you have any opinion about using Java in numerical analysis (NA) / FEM / CFD etc.---i.e., in computational engineering and sciences (CES)?

Do you have any experience or hard data concerning performance of Java vis-a-vis C++ or FORTRAN, esp. for large systems, or for high-performance applications? Any pointers?

Please leave a note... Thanks in advance...