The Art of Computational Science

A series of books on how to build a computational lab


© 2003-2005 Piet Hut and Jun Makino
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What's New?
  • 2005, April 13: our latest release, ACS 1.2

Questions?
Below you can read our various book volumes directly on the web. If you prefer to download a copy, you can choose one of our ACS release versions, which also include the computer programs discussed in the text. We are making all our ACS (Art of Computational Science) material available under the conditions of our ACS open source license. See the What is New? page for a description of new developments, and the FAQ page for answers to frequently asked questions.
Having access to the source code is one thing. Having access to the tacit knowledge that went into the process of writing the source code is quite something else. In our Manifesto below, we describe the philosophy behind the ACS initiative.
The Kali project is directed toward the construction of a laboratory for dense stellar systems, such as star clusters, star forming regions, and galactic nuclei containing one or more massive black holes. The presentation is centered around dialogues between two astrophysicists who are in the process of constructing the Kali code from scratch. For more volumes, and a three-line description of each, see the The Kali Code page.
Our first book contains an introduction to setting up N-body experiments, in 260 pages. It is still useful, offering a detailed explanation of a variable time step Hermite code written in C++. Though its contents will soon be superseded by the far more extensive treatment in the Kali project (see above), we will keep this volume here for historical reasons.