This book presents computer programming as a key method for solving mathematical problems. There are two versions of the book, one for MATLAB and one for Python. The book was inspired by the Springer book TCSE 6: A Primer on Scientific Programming with Python (by Langtangen), but the style is more accessible and concise, in keeping with the needs of engineering students. The book outlines the shortest possible path from no previous experience with programming to a set of skills that allows the students to write simple programs for solving common mathematical problems with numerical methods in engineering and science courses. The emphasis is on generic algorithms, clean design of programs, use of functions, and automatic tests for verification.

Svein Linge is a professor of modelling and simulation at the University College of Southeast Norway and holds a Dr. Scient. degree in biomechanics from the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. He works part-time at a Norwegian Center of Excellence: "Center for Biomedical Computing", at Simula Research Laboratory, to which he has been linked for the last 13 years. His main research interests includes cerebrospinal fluid dynamics, cardiac electro-mechanics and sport biomechanics. Over the last decade, Linge has been particularly engaged in reforming the engineering education in mathematics and physics to take advantage of computer programming and simulation. Hans Petter Langtangen is a professor of computer science at the University of Oslo. He has formerly been a professor of mechanics and is now the director of a Norwegian Center of Excellence: "Center for Biomedical Computing", at Simula Research Laboratory. Langtangen has published over 100 scientific publications and written several books, including papers and the bestseller TCSE 6 "A Primer on Scientific Programming with Python", now in its 5th edition. He has also developed open source and commercial software systems for computational sciences.