On 6/2/07, Douglas Roberts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<snip> [*Footnote from the (or should be) above: I know people who have written applications with no object-oriented technologies at all, using FORTRAN or C, (or worse, purely procedural Java) and who claim to have developed an ABM. I contend, that while they may have developed a really neato simulation, it isn't an ABM. Where are the agents? Rows of an array? Elements of a struct? An array of structs? I really don't think so.
Why? Logically that position doesn't make sense - it seems to confuse the model with the implementation of the model. For example, Epstein & Axtell's Sugarscape model is an ABM. If I code it up, does it only remain an ABM if I code in C++? Does the Sugarscape model suddenly stop being an ABM if I code it in FORTRAN? It might be easier to code in one type of language rather than the other, but that's not the point. ABM-ness is a property of the model, not the code. Robert
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