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From: | Marcus G. Daniels |
Subject: | Re: [Swarm-Modelling] Something Glen said |
Date: | Sun, 26 Nov 2006 22:06:36 -0700 |
User-agent: | Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 (Windows/20061025) |
Steven H. Rogers wrote:
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.I believe the Swarm/Objective-C is a better foundation for future ABM work than Java or .NET, at least for me.
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.
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