[Dune-devel] [GSoC2013]

[Markus Blatt]

Hi Luke,

On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 01:34:47AM -0400, Luke Bovard wrote:
> I saw your organisation on the GSoC list and it has made me very excited. I
> am currently a graduate student (Masters) in applied mathematics doing
> scientific computation, specifically working on computational fluids.

We are very excited, too. This was our first time applying for GSoc
and we were not sure whether our scientific background would fit into
the project.

You background seems to be a perfect fit for our project.

> I am interested in the project on sparse matrices and I'm wondering more
> about the level of C++ skills required. I don't use C++ in my research, we
> use  C/Fortran/Matlab, and I have no experience in developing code in the
> language. I have taught myself a little of the basics, i.e. the ideas of
> classes, objects, and templates and why to use them, but never used them in
> a large project beyond simple little programs written for books (the
> specific one I have is solving PDEs in C++ from SIAM). I was hoping to use
> GSoC this summer to gain experience in the language on a more serious
> project because I feel like I learn best working on something serious.

I thinks this pretty much depends on your level of excitement and
commitment. I am not a fan of language bashing and I think that
programming experience matters most, not languages in particular. I
would say that this project requires intermediate skills in C++,
knowledge about object orientation and templates. Depending on your
knowledge you should be able to pick them up quickly e.g. by books. I
do not know the SIAM book you mentioned (apart from scanning through
the table of contents), but I am not very fond of these kind of
books. The programming language part is often not very up to date.
I usually recommend these books to people that already know C++ books
(Might be outfdated today, but DUNE usually has to be compatible with older
compilers => C++03):

David Vandervoorde and Nicolai M. Josuttis: C++ Templates: The
Complete Guide
Josuttis The C++ Standard Template Library: A Tutorial and Reference

I also have an old script that I might put online.

> 
> Some other relevant background is that I do have experience developing
> parallel code for HPC although it is limited to just MPI. I do have code
> (fortran) that has run on the local supercomputing cluster. I also really
> like numerical linear algebra and just took an advanced topics course on
> numerical linear algebra that covered multigrid (geometric and algebraic),
> GMRES, CG so I find that stuff cool. I also have a lot of experience
> solving numerical PDEs and I familiar with the common techniques  (FD,FV,
> FEM), although in my research we use spectral methods. So if there are any
> other potential ideas that require a greater math background, I am very
> open to them.

Again, very intriguing.

> 
> So as I said, I want to use this GSoC project to bring my C++ skills up to
> a higher level and hopefully my lack of development experience in C++ isn't
> too much of a hindrance.

See above. Please checkout
http://dune-project.org/gscoc/getstarted.html and be prepare to
convince us with your own code samples.

Cheers,

Markus

-- 
Do you need more support with DUNE or HPC in general? 

Dr. Markus Blatt - HPC-Simulation-Software & Services http://www.dr-blatt.de
Hans-Bunte-Str. 8-10, 69123 Heidelberg, Germany
Tel.: +49 (0) 160 97590858  Fax: +49 (0)322 1108991658