NetLogo is a modeling framework used for agent-based, individual based, and cellular automata modeling. It is the most common software used for modeling at George Mason University's Computational Social Science (CSS) program. The course, CSS 600: Introduction to Computational Social Science, assists a new modeler in using this tool. NetLogo provides a Graphic User Interface (GUI) designer and a programming language that has its roots in Lisp via Logo.
This is an easy programming language for new coders and it is free to download and install on your desktop. The developers have also introduced NetLogo Web, a browser based version of NetLogo. It has almost all of the features of the desktop version and runs in most browsers. However, you cannot develop on it and it is verrrry slow. Fortunately, a model developed on the desktop can be uploaded to NetLogo Web and any model on NetLogo Web can export a desktop version.
I plan to post my NetLogo models as desktop versions and will create NetLogo Web versions for those who wish to use a browser.
Pro
- Implements the Model-View-Controller pattern which allows the View portion to be suspended freeing computational resources for the Model.
- GUI designer with pre-made widgets and statistical plots.
- A large number of models are available, from which you can learn.
- Built-in error checking.
- Includes a tab for a text description of your model.
- You get to write programs.
Cons
- No parallelism, although model parallelism (the entire model) is available through Behavior Space.
- Does not scale well beyond a few thousand agents.
- You have to write programs.