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I am in a research group that does ecological modelling, so I've heard a fair bit about NetLogo, though I haven't used it myself. I quite like its approach - l
by veddox 8y ago
I am in a research group that does ecological modelling, so I've heard a fair bit about NetLogo, though I haven't used it myself.
I quite like its approach - like you say, it's a very natural way to do agent-based modelling. I also think its a good beginners' language for modellers who know their field (e.g. ecology) but haven't yet learnt how to program. Lastly, I like it's GUI integration.
However, I am somewhat put off by its verbose "toy language" syntax; and I really can't afford its performance. (We are currently working on a model in Julia, and even that can take up to several weeks to compute a single run on our HPC...) So I guess my opinion is that its a fantastic language to learn about modelling, but not well suited to constructing large, complex and resource-intensive models.
- TuringTest 8y agoIs there a language you would recommend as the next step for someone who has learned NetLogo? One with better syntax and performance? Maybe a Julia library?
- veddox 8y agoWe use Julia in our group and I really like it: the language design is pretty neat and it offers a very good performance. I don't know of any libraries targeted specifically at agent-based modelling, though. (But in the end, as an experienced programmer you don't really need that - plain object-orientation is enough.)
- reuven 8y agoI would argue that for certain kinds of problems, agent-based modeling is easier to think about and work with than object-oriented programming. It's not a matter of your programming experience, but rather what you're trying to model and how. I've heard great things about Julia, but haven't ever used it. Yet another thing that's on my list...