Greetings, Sorry for the basic question, but I am trying to find out if R is a suitable platform for what I want to do... I am interested in creating simulations of distributed algorithms (i.e. team formation, Byzantine Generals , P2P communication modeling, mobile networks) that would be represented in GUIs. I would like to be able to instantiate an object for each node in my simulated (stand alone, one computer) "distributed" environment and then proceed by (a) adding message exchange functionality and (b) algorithm behavior to each node. The simulation results are represented on a GUI that looks like a grid with each node being a dot. As the algorithm progresses, different formations and messages are exchanged between the nodes. I am in a bit of a desperate situation as I am trying to get away from MATLAB (too expensive, no longer available to me) and at the same time would like to avoid developing the infrastructure from scratch (i.e in Java) to run these simulations. Is R suitable for what I am trying to do? I looked around but have not been able to determine if R is the appropriate platform. Your help, comments or suggestion of alternatives and pontification is welcome. Thank you, Ethan B. Finn --------------------------------- [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
[Ethan B. Fini]> I would like to be able to instantiate an object for each node in my > simulated (stand alone, one computer) "distributed" environment and > then proceed by (a) adding message exchange functionality and (b) > algorithm behavior to each node.Not so long ago, I quickly glanced at Eiffel after an enthusiastic friend told me about it, and while I do not think I will soon use it for myself, Eiffel might be the right choice for you, being strong on light-weight processes and message passing, from what I've read... If I had a simulation problem to tackle nowadays, I'd likely consider Python supplemented with greelets from the pylib library, mainly because I'm fond on Python legibility, and have a reasonably good confidence in people having implemented greenlets.> The simulation results are represented on a GUI [...]The GUI aspects of Eiffel are unknown to me, I did not dive deep enough to touch them. For Python, I'd use pygtk, but there are many toolkits to choose from.> Is R suitable for what I am trying to do? I looked around but have not > been able to determine if R is the appropriate platform.R libraries are especially good at statistics and graphics. The language in itself is much oriented towards vectorisation, among other things, and this might be convenient for a speedy implementation of some simulation problems. If vectorisation could not be turned into an advantage for you with R, it is likely that R might be slow for such problems, and also not so well adapted to quasi-parallelism between interacting processes having each their own behaviour. Of course, seasoned R users might have much more sound opinions than mine on this topic! :-) -- Fran?ois Pinard http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca
Hi, people. A correspondent puts me in front of a reply I sent to r-help, a few weeks ago, and quoted below. I should have been tired when I sent it. Please replace "Eiffel" by "Erlang" all over. Sorry for this error. Date: 2006-10-05 00:43:36 Message-ID: 20061005004336.GA24159 at alcyon.progiciels-bpi.ca [Ethan B. Fini] > I would like to be able to instantiate an object for each node in my > simulated (stand alone, one computer) "distributed" environment and > then proceed by (a) adding message exchange functionality and (b) > algorithm behavior to each node. Not so long ago, I quickly glanced at Eiffel after an enthusiastic friend told me about it, and while I do not think I will soon use it for myself, Eiffel might be the right choice for you, being strong on light-weight processes and message passing, from what I've read... If I had a simulation problem to tackle nowadays, I'd likely consider Python supplemented with greelets from the pylib library, mainly because I'm fond on Python legibility, and have a reasonably good confidence in people having implemented greenlets. > The simulation results are represented on a GUI [...] The GUI aspects of Eiffel are unknown to me, I did not dive deep enough to touch them. For Python, I'd use pygtk, but there are many toolkits to choose from. > Is R suitable for what I am trying to do? I looked around but have not > been able to determine if R is the appropriate platform. R libraries are especially good at statistics and graphics. The language in itself is much oriented towards vectorisation, among other things, and this might be convenient for a speedy implementation of some simulation problems. If vectorisation could not be turned into an advantage for you with R, it is likely that R might be slow for such problems, and also not so well adapted to quasi-parallelism between interacting processes having each their own behaviour. Of course, seasoned R users might have much more sound opinions than mine on this topic! :-) -- Fran?ois Pinard http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca