Re: [Swarm-Modelling] Something Glen said

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Steven H. Rogers wrote:
> I believe the Swarm/Objective-C is a better
> foundation for future ABM work than Java or .NET, at least for me.
C# Generics' metadata is not compiled away, as in Java, and there are 
anonymous types and even lambda expressions, but in all these things 
Microsoft reasonably (given their normal application domains), push for 
early binding.  Even Visual Basic on .NET loses variant types.

COM's IDispatch interface conventions provide for late binding as does 
the reflection system of Mozilla's XPCOM and XPConnect system.  For 
example, when Swarm is dynamically loaded into Mozilla and talks to 
JavaScript via XPCOM/XPConnect it's all late bound.   Another nice thing 
about M$COM or XPCOM is that a C++ user, for example, can have 
everything be early bound by default and use late binding on request.

I believe JavaScript is an equal or better of Objective C for models 
that are best conceptualized in a late binding framework. Anything can 
be changed, code can be evaluated on demand, instance variables created 
or destroyed,   With a good ahead of time compiler 
(http://www.mono-project.com/JScript#Introduction) and a high 
performance native code JIT (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin), 
JavaScript becomes an attractive language for ABM.  With XPCOM 
connectivity, it isn't necessary to choose w.r.t. to Swarm.  Models 
could be written in all JavaScript and agent methods would run at speed 
even in a [upcoming Tamarin-equipped] browser.