MSA-Preface

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Table of Contents

= Preface =

We present an introduction to setting up, running and analyzing simulations of stellar system. This description is self-contained: a high-school student should be able to start at page 1, and work her way through the series. We believe that the current book is unique, in providing all the details needed, when starting from scratch.

In many areas of science, computer simulations of complex physical systems cannot be performed with off-the-shelf software packages. Instead, computational scientists have to design and build their own software environment, just as experimental scientists have to design and build their own laboratories, before being able to use them. For a long time, however, the know-how needed to construct computational laboratories has remained only a form of tacit knowledge.

Unlike explicit knowledge that can be found in manuals, this type of implicit knowledge has been alive in conversations among experts, and has been passed down in that way only as a form of oral tradition. This kind of knowledge has not been written down anywhere in sufficient detail to allow it to be passed down without direct personal instructions, or indirect osmosis through personal participation in a joint project.

The problem with the hundreds of introductory text books to science is that they mostly provide summaries, highly distilled collections of knowledge that can only be internalized through a process of hands-on experience that is generally left out. We think there is room for a different approach, one that has not been attempted earlier, as far as we know. We will try to follow a few individual students, getting occasional guidance from a teacher, in the actual process of learning through trial and error. This choice dictates the format as that of a dialogue, in which we can overhear what goes wrong, and how the students sooner or later find out how to correct their errors and misunderstandings.

This book aims at three groups of readers. For scientists, it gives a concrete example for the first steps in setting up a scientific simulation software environment. Whether you are a biologist, physicist, psychologist, or working in another area of science, many of the issues discussed here will come up for you too, when you want to build a new software system, or what is often more challenging, when you want to fully overhaul and modernize an archaic existing system. Because our scientific example has such a simple base, nothing more than Newton's laws of gravity, it is easy to grasp the underlying physics, after which you can focus on the complexity of developing and managing a software laboratory.

The second target group of readers are computer scientists, and in general everyone building complex software systems. While we apply modern concepts such as the use of object-oriented languages and design patterns, and notions such as extreme programming, our main forte is that we fill a gap in the market, by providing a complete discussion of the process of constructing a large-scale software system.

Readers in our third group neither work in natural science nor in computer science. They are simply curious how a modern software system is set up. For example, they may have read about the billions of dollars that are lost because of late delivery of software, or worse, delivery of faulty software. Newly built airports have experienced very costly delays because software for baggage transport was delivered way too late. Perfectly functioning rockets have been blown up because of glitches in complex software systems (see the stories about the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter and an Ariane 5 rocket Perhaps you are an average user of the internet, and just curious about what makes writing large software environments so hard. Perhaps you are working in business or finance, and you are wondering whether to invest in a software company.  How are you going to judge the soundness of the company's approach?  Having a good look in the kitchen will help, to see how software is actually designed and written.  But actually serving as an apprentice in the kitchen would be even better.  That is exactly what this book offers.

Acknowledgements
We thank Hans-Peter Bischof, Stan Blank and his high school students, Steve Giess and Peter Teuben for their comments on the manuscript.

Piet Hut and Jun Makino

About the REVAMP/MicaSim Wiki Version
Beginning in September 2009, we started moving Moving Stars Around to this wiki. ("We," in this case, being Piet Hut and Rob Knop.) The goal is to turn it into a living document, adapting to the needs of its audience as its audience evolves.