View article

Scientific software is application software that supplies data to support decisions in a field of science or engineering. Computational models of climate, geographic information systems to study bird habitats, analysis software for the safe operation of nuclear generating stations and software to study stresses on concrete structures are only a few of the thousands of examples. This scientific software is largely written by scientists, not software specialists. In some organizations, there may be a team of scientists and software specialists, but the complexity of the science requires the participation of the scientist, often as the software developer.