Open-source tool chain
I generally use open-source software whenever possible. Although there are cases where a proprietary tool is the right choice, open-source tools have many advantages.
- Complete control of your critical tools–the vendor will never stop supporting your platform, an upgrade will never be forced upon you, and the licensing fee will never increase.
- Tend to utilize open standards and exchange data much more fluidly than proprietary tools.
- If necessary, your developers can fix a bug themselves. A bug might be critical to your application, but that doesn’t mean it’s a high priority for the application vendor.
Open-Source Tools
- Python for high-level programming
- numpy and scipy
- pypar (parallel programming utilizing MPI)
- matplotlib (2D visualization)
- C++ and Fortran (code that must be small or extremely fast)
- Paraview and VMD (3D visualization)
- Documentation with LyX and LaTeX
- Version control with Subversion
