Agentsheets - Authoring Simulations by Explaining Behavior to Agents
The goal of creating programming environments for casual computer users is a challenge accepted by some software developers. These individuals are attempting to find ways end users (students or anyone wanted to create software applications) can turn an idea into a functional computer program. If you find this goal and the potential educational applications of interest, you would probably be fascinated by the work of Dr. Alexander Repenning. His conceptual ideas and related products have done much to advance this area (paper explaining background of Cocoa and Agentsheets).
A commercial product based on Dr. Repenning's work is Agentsheets ©. This software allows users to program sophisticated simulations by creating agents (i.e., develop the physical appearance of an object and attach triggers, conditionals and actions to this object to tell it what to do) and a setting in which the agents act and interact. The environment looks and acts very much like a spreadsheet. Agents are positioned in the cells of this environment and react to what exists in adjoining cells. I have attempted to duplicate the example used in the book as a way to help you understand how Agentsheet works. In the example intended to demonstrate the behavior of a single gene with dominant and recessive options (see following illustration), butterflies have been defined as homozygous dominant, homozygous recessive, and heterozygous. The butterflies (agents) have been programmed to move about the field and to mate when contacting other butterflies according to the rules governing dominant and recessive genes. If the simulation is successful, the offspring should exist in the proprotion - 25% homozygous dominant, 25% homozygous recessive, and 50% heterozygous. To program this simulation, butterflies are given a physical appearance and then programming statements (see conditions and action pallettes) are attached to the object.
Screen image of Agentsheet © used with permission.
Sophisticated examples based on this approach to programming are available from the Agentsheet web site.