Re: SwarmObject vs SwarmObjectImpl vs Object

[Marcus G. Daniels]

>>>>> "RL" == Rob Leclerc <Rob> writes:

RL> I have been looking through the Java tutorial and I am not sure I
RL> understand the fulle use of SwarmObject and SwarmObjectImpl.  Firt
RL> of all, and as I understand it, SwarmObject is meant to represent
RL> some collection of individuals that make up a swarm.  

Hmm, I can't process this unless I replace the word "SwarmObject" with
"SwarmImpl".  Anyway, `SwarmObjectImpl' is the base class that most
Objective C models use for agents that have no internal scheduling.
`SwarmObjectImpl' is just like an simple object
(e.g. java.lang.Object), but it has some extra probing methods.
There's no real benefit to using `SwarmObjectImpl' in a Java model,
since subclasses of Object will work just as well.  [Objective C users
do have to be careful about the base class of agents, because of
the hairy stuff involved in phase-splitting and the like.]

In contrast, a `SwarmImpl' is a constituency and a synchronized
temporal space.  Say you have an agent that has a bunch of stuff going
on in its head, scheduling things for itself on the basis of external
stimuli.  In such cases you want to have the agent be an instance of
`SwarmImpl' because that will track the subcomponents in the agent and
collate all the schedules so that other agents and the model itself
don't need to know about the internal processing.  In other cases,
when you just have a passive agent that is subjected to state changes,
you don't need to have the overhead of the time collation features of
a `SwarmImpl'.  The advantage of a simple Java object as an agent
(or a `SwarmObjectImpl') is simply physical space.

RL> I personally like the notion of an Object executing on behalf of itself. 

Agreed.

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