Re: Boid writeup idea

Andrew bought up the issues of Complexity and performance.

I can write up pages on either of these topics, my problem is that I'm
totally confused about to whom and also WHY, at this point.  Some
folks seem to not want to believe this works, are hostile even, and
others are ready to ho-hum it.  Fine.  I'll send all'ya'all a link to
a working commercial site  someday not that far off.

COMPLEXITY
The system work to support these things has been a royal pain.  I
would not wish it on anybody. Using "method missing" is dancing with
the devil like somebody told me once - it means that anything you typo
on ends up getting trapped somewhere else.  Eval was a nightmare butI
was assisted months ago to get rid of the worst of those.  Meanwhile
at 3 years of experience with Ruby the work has gotten much better.

Bottom Line  -  this would be good stuff to share but my stuff is not
cleanly domain independent yet - I'm making big progress on this - but
my new domain has been complex enough that this is a challenge.


PERFORMANCE
My system is doing over 2,000 Boids per second on my  half state-of-
the-art
system.   This was a happy surprise for me.

The design, being totally "Boid Centric" almost requires that
everything be done before the Boids are fired! - units are resolved,
checks are made for data ambiguities, prices are reset, whatever - any
external call to another website or such DURING the execution phase
would drag performance down by call kinds of factors.  common sense.

RUBY VS ??
There is so much Reflection and such getting used to keep things free
floating AND little/no maintenance that I can't think about the
goofiness of doing it another way.  Java would not get started on this
stuff unless they've come a longer way than I can imagine.  I don't
know much about the other languages BUT I'd have to guess that most
would not arrive at the fight, and from what Andrew told me about
Python, if I understand his reference to Functions versus Methods,
then I'm pretty sure Ruby would could whip Python in the
implementation and at least hold her own in time trials.


APPLICATIONS FOR THIS TECHNOLOGY
Oh my.  Andrew mentions Financial and "I've been there done that"
enough but yes - anything with Time value Could be done this way.  And
it would be fun.

When I evaluate apps I look for "outside contributors"  (like this
forum could be to a Boid farm to organize a sort of reverse query
system.  Instead of a "subject line" there'd be a set of 2 or 3
picklists presented.  You'd have to pick one - like say "String" - and
100,000 boids contributed (one time) could be fired at that topic.
CATEGORIZATION is a key to this, but its common sense, not rocket
science.  So a newbie would be shown a control panel of hits on his
topic before he started writing his newbie question.  He can then (all
framework stuff) drill down by methods and so on....  or go on to
write his question.  Boids make decisions and "ya ring'n talk'n to
ME?" is like one of the first and so on.  So right here is an app and
the social system plays to the whole thing - fits like a glove - and
no accident either.

BUT real world value wise - that Heart Surgeon in Israel / you in
Boston concocted scenario trips my trigger - its extreme of course,
but entirely doable with not much more than what I have on my system.
I'd suggest that every hospital should, in the end, have three or so
linux based pure Ruby systems bombarding every patient everyday
against dozens of sub-domains of medical oriented Boids.  One set for
heart, one set for recent operations, one set of prescription drugs -
and like this.

Other apps?  my brain explodes inside my Darthvador Helmet - YES -
what's out there all around - in Shopping Baskets should get scanned
by Boids BEFORE any purchase - that's where this started - the info on
hackentoshes is all over the Web but in such a form (date sensitivity)
as to boggle the mind unless you build a new computer every month (I'm
on the 3 year plan) who can keep up with this stuff, and better
phrased, why should anybody have to?   NewEgg and CompuUSA could save
a bundle in open box specials, unhappy customers, and guys that get
95% done and find some part is missing - or worse - the thing won't
boot at that magical moment when you'd really like to see something
appear on your screen, anything. They'd sell more, and people would
just tell each other about how "their shopping basket" was "scanned"
not having a clue that 10,000 ruby boids had bombarded his basket -
hey, about "Scanners" as the catch phrase??


Thunk