Programming As a Part of a Science Education?

An anonymous reader writes "I'm a fairly new physics professor at a well-ranked undergraduate university. When I arrived, I was surprised to discover there were no computer programming requirements for our majors. This has led to a series of fairly animated faculty curriculum conversations, driven by the question: to what extent should computer programming be a part of an undergraduate science education (in particular, physics)? This is a surprising line of questioning to me because in my career (dominated by research), I've never seriously even questioned the need. If you are a physics major, you learn to program. The exact language isn't so important as is flow control, file handling, basic methods/technique, basic resource management, and troubleshooting. The methods learned in any language can then be ported over to just about any numerical or scientific computational problem. Read on for the rest of the reader's questions and his experiences dealing with faculty who have their own ideas. The reader continues, "I'm discovering the faculty are somewhat divided on the topic. There is even a bizarre camp that actually acknowledges the need for computer programming, but turns my 'any language' argument on its head to advocate the students do 'scientific programming' using Excel because it is 'easy,' ubiquitous, and students are familiar with it. They argue Excel is 'surprisingly powerful' with flow control and allows you to focus on the science rather than syntax. I must admit that when I hear such arguments I cannot have a rational discussion and my blood nearly boils. In principle, as a spreadsheet with simple flow control in combination with visual basic capabilities, Excel can do many things at the cartoon level we care about scientifically. But I'm not interested in giving students toys rather than tools. As a scientist raised on a heavy diet of open source software and computational physics, I'll hang my head in shame if our majors start proudly putting Excel down on their resumes. However, in the scientific spirit, perhaps I'm missing something. So I ask Slashdot, to what extent do you feel computer programming should be a part of an undergraduate science education? As a follow-up, if computing is important, what languages and software would best serve the student? If there are physics majors out there, what computing/programming requirements does your department have? My university is in the US, but how is this handled in other parts of the world?"

Comments

Teach them Python

[Anonymous Coward]

While a lot of computational physics requires speed, I find myself on a daily basis needing to write simple programs to collect, filter, transform and plot data. I have found no better language for writing these quickie tools in than Python.

Once they know Python, then they can pick up C++ or Java as context requires it. And if they never have to deal with really huge amounts of computation, then Python + Scipy might get them by for most everything. (And if not, Python has bindings for everything, practically.)

Excel can't handle real scientific data sets

[smolloy]

As someone with a physics doctorate, I am appalled to hear physicists suggesting the use of Excel for real scientific studies. What are those physicists going to do when faced with (for example) particle physics data stored in C++ objects? Or face a control system dominated by Matlab? Or are handed a simulation package built in Fortran?

I'm not suggesting that all physics students must learn C++ and Matlab, but they should be taught a grown-up computer language so that they at least understand the concept of C++ objects, or how to begin solving the problem of communicating with a machine via a Matlab environment.

My examples are very specific, but you get the idea. Physicists need to be aware of certain computer programming concepts (which cannot be gleaned from experience with spreadsheets) otherwise they will fall flat on their face when faced with a real research environment.

The specific language is not very important, but physics tends to be dominated by C/C++ and Fortran, so these would definitely be a good place to start.

Even BASIC is better than Excel.....

C and FORTRAN

[Odder]

All of the libraries and programs of interest are in C and FORTRAN. C++ is interesting and used but the other two still dominate. If you had to chose between the two for teaching people to program, take C. For utility, the two are about equal.

Excel in Science?: Python - All a Scientist Needs

[stm2]

http://aps.arxiv.org/abs/0803.1838

Re:Numerical methods requires programming

[khb]

The best single document would be the classic Goldberg paper on "What Every Computer Scientist should Know about Floating Point Arithmetic" http://docs.sun.com/source/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html (originally published as an ACM paper; kindly corrected and republished by the Sun Floating Point Group (Goldberg worked at Xerox). It should be required reading.

Beyond understanding the differences between conventional mathematical arithmetic and what computers actually do, the student really should have a formal introduction to data structures.

Lastly, and why I hung the comment on this one, Numerical Recipes is well known to not be a good numerical choice. Making it the foundation of a class would be a real crime against computing.

Re:"Other parts of the world"

[Bud]

There's an OSS Matlab clone called GNU Octave, see http://www.octave.org/. It's mostly compatible with Matlab. I've been using it for handling larger datasets or maths-heavy stuff. Works fine. --Bud