Re: [Swarm-Modelling] lifecycle requirements

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > If we imagine that X, Y and Z agents are processes that listen, and that
> > they each have a lexicon that happens to contain passTheSalt with a
> > binding to -abc:, -def:, -ghi:, respectively, it's clear how this has to
> > work, yes?   Of course agents in any given model won't necessarily need
> > to accumulate lots of subjective state, so it's not clear to me this is
> > a common case a toolkit must address
> >     
glen e. p. ropella wrote:
> The primary sticking
> points lie in two places: 1) the lexicons are _dynamic_ so under some
> conditions "passTheSalt" is bound to -abc:arg1 but under other
> circumstances it might be bound to one of the other methods or some
> method that doesn't exist.  2) One has to be able to switch lexicons
> when working on the internals of different agents.
>   
Here's one approach:

1) A lexicon is a class that get instantiated as a part of a creation of 
a agent type; thus all instances of such agent types have lexicons.
As there is a slot in an agent for its lexicon, thus lexicon is 
replaceable with another at will.   Or this slot can be used for a list 
of lexicons to enable multilingual agents.
(Where each mini-language per agent is not necessarily exactly the same 
language that everyone else has.)

2) The lexicon class has a method that given a name, returns an 
implementation (e.g. a Selector in Objective C)

3) The lexicon initializes its bindings from some global pool or 
stochastically given a community of agents (and thus their lexicons) to 
observe from.
In a simple extreme case, this pool could be all Selectors active in the 
runtime.
(e.g. iterate over them using the Objective C runtime)

The details of #3 depend on your model.  As would the decisions about 
when to replace a lexicon, or make changes to it.
> I agree.  However, different people have different levels of
> understanding and different perspectives.  If one or more people in any
> conversation tend to _shut_ others down with their jargon-laden
> statements, it intimidates many of the other people, thereby preventing
> the conversation from being enlightened by their comments and knowledge.
>   
We all have our lexicons, and it's up to each of us to decide what we 
want in it and what it is a distraction.
The items that go in a lexicon are arbitrary and selected by 
circumstance and individual preference, but nonetheless this is a 
technical activity we are engaged in and so there is a skewed 
distribution words found here.   There is just no point in harping on 
warm and fuzzy modeling Red words being better and more `appropriate' 
than bad cold and unfriendly Blue programming words.   I, for one, will 
use both Red and Blue words as a function of the topic hand in and spite 
the possibility that an audience may be made up of individuals having 
different affinities.  That being said, there is no reason to be 
intimidated about asking what a term of any color means in alternative 
language.  Nor is there even any reason I can see why we all have to 
understand one another all of the time.  
> They trust those of us who are familiar and do know what these terms
> mean to either make the decision for them or give them enough but not
> too much information to assist their decision making.
>   
Us and them?   This is an open forum for agent based modeling issues.  
Nothing discussed here recently has really been about directed 
engineering <address@hidden> or technical Q&A about the 
package <address@hidden>.  It's all good.
> As for your comment about a big dumb design document, again, we're not
> at the _design_ phase, yet.  
>   
The waterfall software development process is bad.   These phases are 
your preference, I'm just playing along!