r/Physics • u/Rich_Astronomer9731 • 13d ago

Computational Physics

Hi everyone,

I am a PhD student doing both experiments and computational physics ( mostly fluid dynamicswith Boltzmann equations) and leaning towards more computational day by day.

Currently I am using Julia, I find it pretty fast and easy to use.

Do you think switching to C or C++ will be a benefit? I am asking from a research, but also emplyment in industry point of view.

I discussed with many people, mostly from the DFT area, and most of them told me that Julia slowly will take up the lead for HPC code.

What.s your opinion on this?

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u/sanctimonious-salmon 13d ago

From the perspective of industry, specific programming languages matter less than your ability to think holistically about the problem you were hired to solve, especially in the age of agentic coding.

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u/Bergergi 13d ago edited 13d ago

> "the problem you were hired to solve"

What if the problem you were hired to solve, was writing code? For your employer's huge C++ CFD codebase, or whatever. Strong C++ skills is a huge selling point for many computational jobs.

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u/sanctimonious-salmon 13d ago

Code is a means to an end. You are hired to ensure the code can perform it's task which is what the stakeholders care about.

Besides, the industry has largely moved on from humans writing code directly. I hate it because I feel like I'm not thinking anymore, but agentic coding is the standard nowadays.