intro

[Theodore C. Belding]

Hi-
I'm a student here at Michigan; for the past few years I've been working on
genetic algorithms.  This summer I did some preparatory work on porting
John Holland's Echo to Swarm, but I wasn't able to make any real progress
before classes started up again this fall.  Next term I'll be taking a
course with Bob Axelrod, for which I'm thinking of porting one of the
social science models that Rick mentioned to Swarm.  Outside of Swarm, I'm
currently trying to write an "industrial-strength" OO GA in C++, one that
won't have to be re-designed from the bottom-up every time I want to make a
change to it, as opposed to my current version...

Regarding the Obj C books, I read through all 3 of them this summer, and I
wasn't that thrilled with any of them.  Obj C seems to be under-supported
in general, as far as programming environments, tools, and literature go.
Nelson has some pointers to some online literature on his Web page.  It
might help to read up a little on Smalltalk, since the Obj C programming
model is closely related to Smalltalk's.

While we're on the subject of books:
Gamma, E., et al. (1995). Design patterns.  Elements of reusable
object-oriented software.  Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-63361-2

Patterns are the current rage in OO programming, and this book has been
getting a lot of attention.  It's deserved.  I've been reading it while I
should have been studying for finals, and it's made a huge impression on
me.  It includes source code examples in C++ and Smalltalk, but it's pretty
much language-independent.  It's a sort of catalog of idiom-level building
blocks for OO programming.  Highly recommended.
-Ted

--
Ted Belding                  address@hidden or address@hidden
University of Michigan          Division of Computer Science and Engineering
http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~streak/