SimLogo : improving simulations in StarLogo TNG

Abstract

StarLogo TNG (The Next Generation) is a graphical programming environment originally developed by the MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program as a means of improving computer literacy and programming skills in middle and high school students. The original goal of StarLogo TNG was to make computer programming more accessible to students by designing a programming framework, StarLogoBlocks, which could graphically represent the control flow and data structures of a program, and to introduce a "coolness" factor by permitting students to view their program's execution in a 3D game-like environment called SpaceLand. However, after the program was released, the team found that researchers and professionals were using StarLogo TNG for more complex agent-based simulations than it had been originally designed to support. This thesis outlines the design and implementation of a new suite of features, code-named SimLogo, which will improve the simulation capabilities of StarLogo TNG through the addition of true internal parallelism to the virtual machine.