Python or JavaScript scripting for NetLogo?

Question

NetLogo is excellent for agent-based modeling...except for the language. I always find myself contorting my brain trying to figure out how to do something that should be simple to code (such as implementing a simple case statement) in NetLogo's Logo implementation. Logo is just not a programmer's language (apologies to those infuriated by this assertion).

I saw Abe Gong's Tengolo project that purported to do just this (http://compsocsci.blogspot.com/2012/02/announcing-tengolo-python-alternative.html) but the project appears to have been abandoned. Also another question in stack overflow (agent-based simulation: performance issue: Python vs NetLogo & Repast) seems to indicate that Python would be slower.

Seems like it would be quite possible to use Jython to compile into modules that NetLogo could use, but I wondered if anyone is aware of something that would let me do NetLogo simulations in a sensible language like Python. Thoughts?

Answer 1

As of April 2018, there is a new kid on the block, PyNetLogo, and it is even available in PyPi for simple installation via pip.

Paper @ JASSS: PyNetLogo: Linking NetLogo with Python (March 2018)

Code @ Github

Documentation