Rapid prototyping frameworks for developing scientific applications: A case study

In this paper, we describe a Python-based framework for the rapid prototyping of scientific applications. A case study was performed using a problem specification developed for Marmot, a project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory aimed at re-factoring standard physics codes into reusable and extensible components. Components were written in Python, ZPL, Fortran, and C++ following the Marmot component design. We evaluate our solution both qualitatively and quantitatively by comparing it to a single-language version written in C.