StarLogo TNG

By Martin Heller

March 6, 2006

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Graphical programming has been a dream for as long as I can remember. Not my dream, mind you--someone else's dream. Every time I have tried someone's nifty graphical programming environment, I have gotten frustrated and gone back to real programming with a written syntax, being by nature a language-oriented guy.

On the other hand, learning a programming language takes a certain level of development. I have met a few middle-school students who have gotten to that level, along with many high-school students and most college students.

The MIT Teacher Education Program has targeted the middle-school and high-school group with StarLogo TNG, "The Next Generation of StarLogo modeling and simulation software." I wrote about StarLogo 2.0 in October, 2002; I also tied StarLogo back to its origins in the original Logo implementation of 1967, and through Seymour Papert of MIT back to Papert's teacher, the constructivist Jean Piaget.

As an example of StarLogo 2.0 programming, I explained the Termite simulation. StarLogo TNG also comes with a Termite simulation. However, the implementation is graphical. The StarLogo Go button runs a short infinite loop:

to go
  search-for-chip   ; find a wood chip and pick it up
  find-new-pile     ; find another wood chip
  find-empty-spot   ; find a place to put down wood chip
end

The equivalent in StarLogo TNG is:

The switch at the lower left of the Forever block turns the simulation on and off. Notice how the Wiggle routine block fits into the extension at the top right of the Forever block, how the ifelse block has a rounded fitting at the top right for a test, and sequence fittings for the then and else branches of the test results.

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