Contents

• 0. Preface
• 0.1. The ACS Initiative
• 0.2. The Maya Series, and the Kali Code
• 0.3. A Narrative in Dialogue Form
• 0.4. ACS versions
• 0.5. Background
• 0.6. Historical Note
• 0.7. Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
• 1.1. A Chat between Two Astronomers
• 1.2. Dense Stellar Systems
• 1.3. The Equal-Mass Point-Particle Approximation
• 2. Stellar Evolution
• 2.1. The Role of Stellar Evolution
• 2.2. The Case for Including Stellar Evolution
• 2.3. Tracks and Recipes for (Binary) Star Evolution
• 2.4. Limitations of Tracks and Recipes
• 3. A Kitchen Sink Approach
• 3.1. The Need for Combining Codes
• 3.2. Parametrization
• 3.3. Comparison with Observation
• 4. Software Architecture
• 4.1. Legacy Codes
• 4.2. Modularity
• 4.3. Interface specifications
• 4.4. A Matter of Opinion?
• 4.5. Writing a toy model
• 5. Dense Stellar Systems
• 5.1. Galactic Suburbia
• 5.2. Galactic Nuclei
• 5.3. Star Forming Regions
• 5.4. Open Clusters
• 6. An Educational Project
• 6.1. A Toy Model on the Web
• 6.2. Free and Open
• 6.3. Open Source License
• 7. Stellar Evolution and Hydrodynamics
• 7.1. A Minimal Vision
• 7.2. A Top Down Approach
• 7.3. Choosing Ingredients
• 7.4. An Interface Specification
• 8. Stellar Dynamics
• 8.1. Regularization
• 8.2. Local versus Global
• 8.3. The Name of the Game
• 8.4. An Integration Scheme
• 9. Environment
• 9.1. A Toolbox
• 9.2. Operating System
• 9.3. Choosing a Language
• 9.4. Graphics
• 10. Style
• 10.1. Documentation
• 10.2. Literate Programming and Coherent Programming
• 10.3. A Lab Note Mechanism
• 11. Literature References