8 October 2026 to 18 February 2027
Europe/Brussels timezone

Introduction to scripting

26 Nov 2026, 13:30
2h 30m
CYCL09a

CYCL09a

chemin du cyclotron 2, Louvain-La-Neuve

Speaker

Damien François (UCLouvain/CISM)

Description

Interpreted languages are often perceived as less performance-oriented than compiled languages. However, they offer significant advantages in terms of development speed, flexibility, and ease of use. Modern scientific ecosystems provide powerful tools that allow interpreted languages to reach near-compiled performance while maintaining high productivity. This session introduces the main interpreted languages used in scientific computing and demonstrates how to deploy and optimize them on CÉCI clusters.

Contents Information
• Use cases, strengths, and weaknesses of interpreted languages
• The scientific computing trilogy: Octave, R, and Python
• Understanding and selecting interpreter builds
• Installing and managing additional libraries and packages
• Using compiled code from interpreted languages
• Techniques for improving performance
• Compiling or accelerating interpreted code
• Best practices for scientific computing on HPC systems
Prerequisite:
• Basic understanding of procedural programming (conditions, loops, functions, etc.)
• Being able to use SSH with private keys
• Being familiar with a text editor
• Mastering the Linux command line and GNU utilities (mkdir, cp, scp, etc.)

Type: Hands-on
Target audience: Rookie programmers
Must: This session is a nice-to-have.

Presentation materials

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