Re: The Swarm space (was RePast (another agent toolkit) released)

[Marcus G. Daniels]

>>>>> "DS" == SCHREIBER,DARREN MATTHEW <address@hidden> writes:

DS> I have benefited tremendously from reading other people's code and
DS> will be a bit disheartened as more and more Swarm models are
DS> produced in a language I can't read yet.

Please keep in mind that it's the same abstract interface as the
Objective C version.  Actions go in Schedules, Schedules go in Swarms,
objects have a create and using phases, etc.  So while Java Swarm
models won't be helpful for teaching syntax, if you want to discuss
the details of a model (say, in a paper), that description will be the
same, whether the implementation was in Objective, Java, Scheme, XML,
whatever..  I think you will also find it isn't that hard to learn to
read Java Swarm code, given that Java is C-like and you know the Swarm
semantics.

DS> And, since the new MacOS X will be using
DS> Objective C, perhaps I'll just stay blissfully Java illiterate
DS> forever.

Last year at SwarmFest, a nice guy by the name of Benjamin Koo contributed
a copy of Apple WebObjects to the Swarm project.  We still haven't got
Swarm running with Apple's runtime, but in principle it could be done.
(Swarm's support for object phases means that we have to work with the
Objective C runtime data structures directly, and that means duplicate
code for the GNU Objective C runtime and Apple runtime.)

For 2.1, we had planned to redesign the phase machinery to be more
portable, allowing straightforward subclassing of defobj, collections,
and activity things.  Unfortunately, to do that right would have
implied disruptive interface changes of the deep variety.

This is not to say that Swarm couldn't be made to work on Mac OS X,
just that to do it right (so that Interface Builder could be used to
design models), would be non-trivial, and add significant redundancy
and complexity to Swarm.





                  ==================================
   Swarm-Modelling is for discussion of Simulation and Modelling techniques
   esp. using Swarm.  For list administration needs (esp. [un]subscribing),
   please send a message to <address@hidden> with "help" in the
   body of the message.
                  ==================================