Re: Compare Swarm with Repast

[Russell Standish]

Problems with Java.

1) Its slow
2) Has too many incompatible versions
3) Lacks operator overloading
4) Lacks generic programming
5) Lack multiple inheritance and polymorphism

(Personally, I don't care about the last point, as I don't use those features)

WRT to 2), the last time I used Java was 2 years ago - its possible
that this situation has imporved in the meantime.

But the other 3 points are pretty significant.

My usual development environment is C++. Its problems are:

1) Lack of garbage colection (Garbage collectors do exist for C++, so
this is really a non-problem - more importantly defensive programming
techniques exist to avoid memory problems)

2) Has too many incompatible versions - again within the last year,
this problem has gone away with the widespread implementation of ANSI
C++

3) Lack of object reflection - this is addressed within the Classdesc
project, which had its first release at the beginnning of this year.

4) Lack of a decent ABM toolkit like Swarm. Ecolab partially fills
this void, but more importantly within the Classdesc project, we're
aiming at bridging the C++/Objective C divide to enable C++
development of Swarm models.

                                                Cheers

Christopher J. Mackie wrote:
> 
> I've never understood what Paul has against Java--what's not to like about
> someone else taking out your garbage? :-)
> 



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A/Prof Russell Standish                  Director
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