Anyone want to work on updating ASM with me?

[Paul Johnson]

I've spoken to Brandon Weber and he says the ASM-2.1 code that is in the
SFI site now is pretty-much the state of the art.  His effort lately has
been in preparing documentation about the program, both in its original
Objective-C form for the Next OS and the Swarm version called ASM. 

The Swarm version is a bit dated, if you look. It uses plenty of direct
memory management with malloc/calloc, and it does its own GA from
scratch, not using Breeder or GM or any outside library.  Brandon
indicated that he expected the user community would take up the
initiative of revising/updating ASM. I do not believe we are stepping on
anybody's toes if we decide to take it up.

I don't intend to publish anything based on this, I just dig the model
and am willing to put some effort into it.   I've always been infatuated
with it  and if a few people joined me in a discussion of how to update
and streamline the ASM code, something useful might come out of it.  I
think if you spend an afternoon looking around in there, you will see
what I mean about it.  It is not exactly the kind of thing you would
want to give to a student and say "here, this is the way swarm models
ought to be."  Not that I know what they ought to be, but....

-- 
Paul E. Johnson                       email: address@hidden
Dept. of Political Science            http://lark.cc.ukans.edu/~pauljohn
University of Kansas                  Office: (785) 864-9086
Lawrence, Kansas 66045                FAX: (785) 864-5700


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