Authors:
Russ Abbott
and
Jung Soo Lim
Affiliation:
Department of Computer Science, California State University, Los Angeles, 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Keyword(s):
ABM, Agent-Based Modeling, NetLogo, PyLogo, Python, Simulation.
Abstract:
In the world of Agent-Based Modeling (ABM), NetLogo reigns as the most widely used platform. The NetLogo world of agents interacting in a two-dimensional space seems to provide just the right level of simplicity and abstraction for a wide range of models. Regrettably, the NetLogo language makes model development more painful than necessary. This combination—widespread popularity accompanied by unnecessary coding pain—motivated the development of PyLogo, a NetLogo-like modeling and simulation environment in which developers write their models in Python. Although other NetLogo-like systems exist, as far as we know PyLogo is the only NetLogo-like system in Python at this level of completeness. This paper examines a number of issues with the NetLogo language and offers a simple, illustrative PyLogo example model. PyLogo is open source and is available at this GitHub repository. We welcome collaborators.