[HN Gopher] NovaStelo: Block-style programming for multi-agent s...
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       NovaStelo: Block-style programming for multi-agent systems, based
       on MIT Scratch
        
       Author : mpweiher
       Score  : 58 points
       Date   : 2020-05-10 16:20 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | gorgoiler wrote:
       | Scratch is rad. It's so productive. Modeling threads as sprites
       | -- a physical version of actors with <touch> being the most
       | common _message passing_ -- is such a liberating  / accelerating
       | idea.
       | 
       | It's also a bit too easy to get, ahem, emergent properties in
       | Scratch, but that's fine for one off playful hacking. Pong bats
       | that accelerate balls etc.
        
       | qwe098cube wrote:
       | I have read "multi-agent system" or "agent based programming" a
       | few times, but I have not yet understood what is meant by it.
        
         | pdexter wrote:
         | As in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent-based_model I believe
        
         | ww520 wrote:
         | It's basically programming an ant, or an ant prototype, with
         | some simple rules, and hoping the interaction among a swarm of
         | them will create some emergent behavior at the colony level.
        
         | thelazydogsback wrote:
         | This looks like cellular-automata and other reactive a-life --
         | while I suppose you could stretch the def'n of multi-agent
         | systems to cover these, it's certainly not the first thing that
         | you'll find in the literature. Cool though.
         | 
         | Smalltalk had some groundbreaking ideas -- but "an app. is an
         | image of the whole, monkey-patched class hierarchy shipped with
         | the entire system" certainly wasn't it's greatest contribution.
        
           | felixgallo wrote:
           | That "certainly" is a little funny to hear in the age of
           | docker images.
        
         | gowld wrote:
         | It just means running separate processes that communicate, like
         | the programs on your PC.
        
         | mthoms wrote:
         | This is a great explanation as to why modeling the behaviours
         | of each "agent" (a citizen in this case) is more realistic than
         | attempting to model the system (a city) as a whole.
         | 
         | https://theconversation.com/how-big-data-and-the-sims-are-he...
        
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       (page generated 2020-05-10 23:00 UTC)