Re: Porting SWARM to JAVA or C++

[Christoph Schlumpf]

>On Wed, 2 Oct 1996, Christoph Schlumpf wrote:
>
><SNIP>
>> Objective C gets more and more marginalised between other languages like
>> C++, Java and Smalltalk.
>
>I disagree. I think Obj-C is growing fairly quickly as a viable
>alternative to these languages. Consider that the GNUstep project is
>approaching a very usable form and all the ports of OpenStep available.
>
><SNIP>
>> In contrast to Objective C Java has the following advantages:
>>
>> - Big community of programmers on the internet
>
>Being a small superset of C, Obj-C has a huge community of programmers
>that could learn it in just a few days (if I could learn it quickly,
>anyone can).
>
>> - New professional visual development environments for all major platforms
>
>ala OpenStep (and the forthcoming GNUstep)
>
>> - Runs on all major platforms (the runtimemodule is free)
>
>ala gcc
>
>> - Java is multithreaded (good for User Intrerface design)
>
>Objective-C (gcc) is multithreaded with the new patches available from
>the GNUstep people.
>
>> - There are a growing number of free graphics librarys for Java
>
>The OpenStep specifications provide definitions for all the graphics
>needed by Swarm. These are nearing a usable form in GNUstep.
>
>> I'd like to have a java port of swarm!
>> What about the other swarm users/programmers? What do you think?
>
>I don't mean this to sound like I'm starting a holy war or anything.  I
>just don't want to see swarm drift away from Obj-C. I'm afraid that if a
>java version of swarm get's implemented that this could reduce the
>contributions to the official swarm and would defeat the premise of
>providing a standard environment for research (for reproducing experiments
>and the like). I mean if I see some interesting research results that I
>would like to verify or reproduce, and the research was done using a java
>version of swarm. The first thing I would have to do, before any research,
>would be to convert all the code from java to Obj-C. This would be a major
>pain and waste a lot of time.
>
>I apologize if any of this sounded too obnoxious. I meant none of it
>to be offesive toward you Christoph and I think Java is a good language,
>particularly for network based autnomous agent research. I just
>felt the need to chime in here with my $0.2 on the topic.
>
>Thanks,
>
>John Eikenberry
>(address@hidden)
>______________________________________________________________
>"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order
> will deserve neither and lose both."
>
>                                         --Thomas Jefferson

Dear John,

I really didn't want to start a war. I think that the swarm people are
doing a very good job and ObjC seems to me to be a appropriate language to
implement swarm in. But each language has its pros and cons. I just wanted
to state (and this only because there were people in the swarm-support
group asking for it) that java has some pros and that with the new release
of java there is no technical reason why one can't build a messaging system
in java which is comparable powerful as in swarm.

I think you don't have to fear that swarm drifts away from ObjC. There is
much of time and money in this swarm implementation and a growing number of
researchers working with it. The swarm developers have done a tremendeous
good job. To get a comparable good product in java the same amount of time
and money would have to be spent. -- Perhaps this isn't worth it --

I think the main advantage of swarm is that it brings together a broad set
of researchers. It builds a common language for them to discuss problems
when simulating complex multi-agent systems. No one has to reinvent the
wheel when implementing a model.

But I think that it wouldn't be bad for the swarm community if there was a
Java port of swarm. There are so many new and good ideas in swarm that an
implementation in other languages could be a good complement to the ObjC
implementation. But there would be a considerable amount of time and money
needed to do it.

Perhaps I sounded to euphoric in my last email. I will certainly not do a
Java port (i'm not able to and I have no money to have it done). I would
like to have a Java port but I feel quiet comfortable with the present
implementation of swarm.

Regards,

Christoph

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