Using object-oriented and literate-programming techniques for the development of a computational electromagnetics library

Code maintenance is perhaps the most time-consuming problem in developing source code for various purposes. The increased complexity of computational-electromagnetics (CEM) simulation software makes this task even more difficult and tedious. The current paper proposes a sophisticated approach for a significant performance improvement in CEM code-maintenance tasks, with the fusion of object-oriented and literate-programming techniques. A case study concerning the development of a CEM library is thoroughly analyzed and presented. Various aspects of computational efficiency have been examined in order to estimate the costs of developing object-oriented CEM programs. The aim of the analysis is to stress the advantages of the above-mentioned techniques, and to provide useful guidelines for effective implementation of CEM programs with reusable, extensible, self-documented source code.