DECAF Programming: An Introduction
Foster McGeary · 2001
Agent programming has required mastery of several concepts before working agents could be developed. Those concepts include programming in a high-level language, understanding communication protocols, ithinking distributedly,i and project management. With DECAF, we make advances in reducing the level of prociency required with these concepts to develop useful working agents. We believe undergraduates can reasonably be expected to build working agents with DECAF. Specication and explanation of DECAF appears in other work. This paper is intended to assist the user unexperienced with DECAF to iget up and runningi with simple agents. John R. Graham, Ph.D., completed DECAF before departing to teach at Coastal Carolina University. Dr. Graham’s new website is http://www.coastal.edu/ graham/. DECAF continues as a part of Dr. Decker’s research program. This paper is a brief introduction to using DECAF for simple agent systems. It borrows liberally from the documentation prepared by Drs. Graham and Decker or under their direction. That documentation is available directly at http://www.eecis.udel.edu/ decaf/, the DECAF website at the University of Delaware. Interested persons are encouraged to visit that website and to use (and download if helpful) the material available there.