3.1. Why Swarm uses Objective C

Swarm uses object-oriented programming not only because this is a good way to build general-purpose software libraries, but because the very concept of an object is at the base of how you build a model in Swarm. To build a simulation in Swarm, the first step to define the various kinds of objects that can inhabit some real or artificial world, and the second step is to define the kinds of events that can occur to these objects, including all the different ways that the objects can interact with each other.

The basic concept of an object is that it responds to external events, and that the only thing that really matters about an object are the ways it can be observed responding to these events. In an object-oriented programming system, an object is represented by some uniquely identified chunk of data, and the events are the dynamic operations that can be made to occur on these objects.

Different object-oriented programming systems define the operations that occur on objects in different ways. For example, in C++ the operations are called "member functions" and look much like an ordinary function call in the C language. In Objective C, an operation on an object is called a "message" and has a special syntax by which you call it, but a message also has arguments and behaves in many respects like a call to a function.

The key requirement for Swarm is to be able to make all these operations happen to any object at any time, whenever they're supposed to occur within some simulated world. It stores these operations inside its own data structures, and when you run a simulation in Swarm, the Swarm system itself traverses these data structures to make the necessary operations happen at the proper time.

Swarm needs to be able to make any kind of action happen to any kind of object at any time, and to do this it needs very general-purpose structures that hold some kind of representation of the actions themselves. That's a special requirement that not every object language provides. You already have enough work to define the kinds of objects that can exist inside your model, and Swarm doesn't want you to have to define an even larger number of objects for every kind of event that might occur to your objects. Instead, it wants the object language to provide it with a representation of the operations on objects that you've already defined. Swarm can then store these representations in its own data structures, and make the operations happen whenever it needs to.

In Swarm, the representation of events that happen on objects are just as fundamental to the model as the objects themselves. That's why Swarm is a "discrete-event" simulation system. But if the object system doesn't provide a general-purpose enough representation of events as well as objects, there would be a lot more work to do. The Objective C system, through its special data type called a "message selector," provides a representation of operations that is flexible enough to do this, but the C++ language does not. (In C++, the compiler requires more information about an operation than the event structures in Swarm would be able to provide.)

There's a host of additional reasons why Objective C has also been a good match for the requirements of the Swarm system. Like C++, the operations on objects can be compiled to a very efficient form (though Objective C does require a little more overhead than C++ to get the operation started). This efficiency can be very important for a simulation, since simulations can run for very long periods of time to explore all the behavior that might occur within their simulated worlds. Other languages, such as Lisp, Smalltalk, and Java, also have the "dynamic message dispatch" feature that would make general-purpose event structures possible, but they still carry significant added overhead compared to C.

Objective C is also a very simple extension to the C language. Basic knowledge of C is already widespread, and a few days are typically all that is needed to learn the few additions of Objective C. (Really learning the concepts of objects, however, can take much longer, no matter what object language you try to use.)

Objective C was also a good choice for Swarm because it has a high quality, freely distributable implementation in the GNU C compiler. One of the main concerns about Objective C is that it isn't nearly as widely known or used as other languages like C++, but at least the GNU C compiler assures it will be available on machines where Swarm needs to run. The OpenStep system now part of the Apple Rhapsody project (formerly NeXTStep of the NeXT corporation), and the parallel GNUStep project, also help assure that Objective C is a living language.

There are even more powerful aspects of Objective C that Swarm takes advantage of. Some of these are described in the Advanced Usage Guide of the defobj library. But many others are at the heart of how Swarm uses Objective C, and so are dealt with in the rest of this Usage Guide. The entire purpose of the defobj library is to define a standard style for the use of Objective C in Swarm. This style is backed up by a library of foundation classes that Swarm provides to support this style.

Swarm provides its own foundation classes even for such basic operations as creating an object, and other support that user classes ordinarily receive from a builtin Object superclass. A good understanding of the defobj library is essential for Objective C programming in Swarm. Like any programming language, Objective C requires learning not only the rules of the language itself, but also a standard library of initial capabilities that you build from. Objective C doesn't really have a single official standard library (or language definition either, for that matter), but the OpenStep foundation libraries (and the OpenStep language definition) come very close to this status.

For a variety of reasons explained here and in the Advanced Usage Guide, Swarm doesn't use a standard library based on the NextStep foundation interface. You can still learn the Objective C language from other available sources, but you have to be careful to sort out the language level from the standard object and library support they also discuss.

The index page of the Swarm documentation provides a variety of links to other Objective C resources. In particular, it provides a link to a complete on-line reference for the Objective C language as defined by OpenStep (formerly NextStep) and implemented by the GNU C compiler. None of the Swarm documentation attempts to duplicate this coverage of the basic language; Swarm assumes that you learn Objective C from other available sources. The Objective C reference (Object-Oriented Programming and the Objective C Language) is the single best available source, and it can also be ordered as a hardcopy book from the Rhapsody Developer Documentation site . Don't try to program in Objective C without it.

3.2. Swarm style of Objective C Programming

No matter where you've learned to program in Objective C, don't try to use Objective C in Swarm without understanding the special ways in which Swarm adapts its use of the language and the language runtime system. Your place to find this information is right here in the defobj library. Defobj not only provides the most basic layer of foundation class libraries for Swarm, but also serves as the place where all the rules and guidelines for the use of Objective C in Swarm are gathered together.

Some of these rules and guidelines don't even require any specific software to implement them, but are just conventions and recommended style that anyone programming in Objective C can follow when their goals are similar to those of Swarm, and to a large extent often do. These kinds of conventions are the focus of this section; following sections discuss aspects of Swarm Objective C style that depend on specific software support.

More to come... For now, see Library Interface Conventions for some of this information, and Swarm tutorials for much of the rest.