An Evaluation of Programming Languages and Language Features for Engineering Software Development

Also published as'Procedural Programming Languages for the Development of CAD and CAE Systems Software,'in the proceedings of ASME International Conference on Computers in Engineering (1987: New York, NY). The scope of engineering software has increased dramatically in the past decade. In its early years, most engineering applications were concerned solely with solving difficult numerical problems, and little attention was paid to man- machine interaction, to data management, or to integrated software systems. Now computers solve a much wider variety of problems, including those in which numerical computations are less predominant. In addition, completely new areas of engineering applications such as artificial intelligence have recently emerged. It is well recognized that the particular programming language used to develop an engineering application can dramatically affect the development cost, operating cost. reliability, and usability of the resulting software. With the increase in the variety, functionality, and complexity of engineering software, with its more widespread use, and with its increasing importance, more attention must be paid to programming language suitability so that rational decisions regarding language selection may be made. It is important that professional engineers be aware of the issues addressed in this paper, for it is they who must design, acquire, and use applications software, as well as occasionally develop or manage its development. This paper addresses the need for engineers to possess a working knowledge of the fundamentals of computer programming languages. In pursuit of this, the paper briefly reviews the history of four well known programming languages. It then attempts to identify and to look critically at the attributes of programming languages that significantly affect the production of engineering software. The four procedural programming languages chosen for review are those intended for scientific and general purpose programming, FORTRAN 77, C, Pascal, and Modula-2. These languages are compared and some general observations are made. As it is felt important that professional engineers should be able to make informed decisions about programming language selection, the emphasis throughout this paper is on a methodology of evaluation of programming languages. Choosing an appropriate language can be a complex task and many factors must be considered. Consequently, fundamentals are stresse