Re: [Swarm-Modelling] Good reviews with the info the greenhorn needs?

[Maarten Sierhuis]

I think that this is fine as an academic exercise. It is important for the ABM research community to debate the difference and similarity of different languages, since that extends the general knowledge of ABM languages. But, from a user's perspective, this kind of research is not very interesting if not directly applicable to their problem. I think this has been mentioned already by others.

Personally, I have a hard time getting excited about debating the differences between different tools. It reminds me too much about the debates I had to go through in the development of programming languages. I am reminded of the debate about Object-Oriented Programming. In particular the debates about wether C++ is a "real" object-oriented language, or the debate about declarative versus imperative languages. Frankly, I am tired of that. My personal view is, I like Swarm, I like Repast, I like Brahms, I like Soar, ACT-R, you name it. In the end we're all in it for the "love" of agent-based modeling.

At the moment, I am in a heavy debate in the MAS community about the difference/similarities between goal-directed versus activity-based approaches. To me this is fun as an academic exercise only.

I do want to mention that I enjoy reading people's views on the matters discussed here.

Doei ... MXS

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 Dr. ing. Maarten Sierhuis                 USRA/RIACS

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On Nov 23, 2006, at 12:34 PM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

Maarten Sierhuis wrote:

This reminds me of a recent debate we had here at NASA, about similar agent-based tools we have in our organization. Here is a quote from a wise person (not me) in our organization:

"At a higher strategic level -- drawing on some advice I got once from our good friend

[name deleted] -- let's keep our focus on *problems* and not on *methods*. We should not

be drawn into an argument about what [Tool X], or [Tool Y], or [Tool Z] can or cannot do in

the abstract. Rather we should demonstrate that [Tool X] can solve the actual problems

that [name deleted] and his team are presented with. If [Tool X] has solved these problems on time

and on budget, it becomes moot whether or not [Tool Y] or [Tool Z] might be able to solve

some of them.

We should be drawn into arguments about what tools can do in the abstract if we are talking about what tools to make or what tools not to elaborate.  It matters what is really true about these tools, not how determined rhetoric can make it sound. It's a completely moot point if a team has applied a tool to do useful work because that could just be because they were lucky enough to have productive teams (e.g. even writing in numerical machine opcodes). 

This reminds me of a good talk I went to recently.

The speaker said "to sequence analysts I say I'm a pipette geek, and to pipette geeks I say I'm just a sequence analyst".   A listener chuckled, "You know, I bet the reviewers say that too!"

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