Finite element analysis modeling is really hard, even for nuclear engineers whom can code.
A lot of scientific control system apps get built with LabVIEW or Agilent VEE. If it makes beyond the niche consultancy stage, such things are often (re)written in whatever an engineer happens to know: C, Python, Haskell, LISP, [favorite language religion here].
Edit: BTW, just came across a supposed successor to VMEbus [0] (a standard industrial data bus): VXIbus [1]
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMEbus#/media/File:VMEbus.jpg