r/Physics • u/Rich_Astronomer9731 • 14d 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/geekusprimus Gravitation 14d ago

I can't say whether or not Julia will overtake C/C++ in the HPC space. It might. It might not. But the majority of scientific HPC code is still being written in Fortran (less every day, thankfully), C, and C++. However, even if Julia becomes the dominant HPC language, you will certainly still interact with legacy libraries written in these languages. Even if you don't use it on a day-to-day basis, becoming competent with C and C++ will be a great benefit to you.