Stella: a Python-Based Domain-Specific Language for Simulations

We wish to make it easier and quicker to write well-performing scientific simulations that (1) have single-thread performance competitive with low-level languages, (2) use object-oriented programming to properly structure the code, and (3) are very easy to develop. Instead of prototyping in a high-level language and then rewriting in a lower-level language, we created a DSL embedded in Python that is transparently usable, retains some OOP features, compiles to machine code, and executes at speed similar to C.

1

ACM Symposium on Applied Computing