Re: Open source? -> Need to read source to model?

[Marcus G. Daniels]

>>>>> "DS" == Darren Schreiber <address@hidden> writes:

DS> The single biggest difficulty I had was in getting all the
DS> graphics to work correctly.  With regard to nodes... the
DS> documentation was sparse, the classroom instruction had been nil,
DS> the user guide didn't mention it, and only one example program I
DS> had (BankSim) made use of them.  Overcoming the difficulty came
DS> from studying the one example I had and asking lots and lots of
DS> questions...

DS> Some of my next ambitions include importing empirical data into my
DS> model, automating the collection of statistics and results, and
DS> toying with genetic algorithms.  R, HDF5, and LISP are all
DS> acronyms suggesting that I'll need to expend a lot of energy to
DS> get the results I seek, and the prospect of learning additional
DS> software/interfaces is just not exciting me.

First and foremost, the Swarm project is a tool for agent based
modeling, not a tool for graph theory or a tool for whizzy graphics.
The farther the package drifts toward more and more disparate tasks,
the less and less competently we can execute those tasks.  So I think
the fact you spent/wasted a lot of time dealing with an ad-hoc
Tk-based library that was in Swarm supports this view.

R is a strong statistical package that has an active user community.
Its interfaces are mature (S-Plus), and the chances of finding
documentation and support are excellent.  Can you say the same about
all that tkobjc stuff?

I'm not saying that R is an end-all be-all analysis tool, but I am
saying that if you think Swarm (or any tool) will do *everything* in a
one-stop-shopping kind of way, and support it for free, you're being
way, WAY, too optimistic.

However, to some extent the SDG can target the specific needs of our
members.  For example, the R/HDF5 stuff was written in response from a
request from our primary sponsor, JWAC.






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