OpenFAST vs. Simpack vs. Swift vs. V Programming Language Comparison Chart

OpenFAST is an open source wind turbine simulation tool developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). It builds upon the FAST v8 code, integrating aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, control systems, and structural dynamics to enable comprehensive, coupled nonlinear aero-hydro-servo-elastic time-domain simulations of wind turbines. OpenFAST supports various configurations, including land-based, fixed-bottom offshore, and floating offshore turbines. The platform aims to foster an open source developer community across research laboratories, industry, and academia, providing a robust software engineering framework with well-documented source code, automated testing, and a multi-platform build system. Key organizational changes from FAST v8.16 to OpenFAST include the establishment of a new GitHub repository consolidating glue codes, modules, and compiling tools; updated version numbering; and the introduction of unit testing at the subroutine level.

Writing Swift code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and Swift includes modern features developers love. Swift code is safe by design and produces software that runs lightning-fast. Swift is the result of the latest research on programming languages, combined with decades of experience building Apple platforms. Named parameters are expressed in a clean syntax that makes APIs in Swift even easier to read and maintain. Even better, you don’t even need to type semi-colons. Inferred types make code cleaner and less prone to mistakes, while modules eliminate headers and provide namespaces. To best support international languages and emoji, Strings are Unicode-correct and use a UTF-8 based encoding to optimize performance for a wide-variety of use cases. You can even write concurrent code with simple, built-in keywords that define asynchronous behavior, making your code more readable and less error-prone.