# WhiteBoard Class (for these Boids) **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [March 25, 2010, 2:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whiteboard-class-for-these-boids/185743 "2010-03-25T14:05:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![thunk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/e495f1/32.png) [@thunk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thunk)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2010, 2:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whiteboard-class-for-these-boids/185743/1 "2010-03-25T14:05:45Z")
[http://gist.github.com/343358](http://gist.github.com/343358) This seems to work with decent performance but I have little/no experience using some of these features - almost seems “too good to be true” to this old time programmer that spent days designing/testing linked lists in the old days… its 40 lines of code that seems to have some pretty cool abilities. (And ya, it could be a hash of hashes…) I had this idea based on something I saw in ‘Builder’ and have read about and tonight I just spent sometime testing it and it just worked right out of the gate. It seems to work for my special purposes - will chat about that below if somebody is interested (involves the Boid project). Mostly I’d appreciate any kind of warning if this seems to be some sort of a boon\_doggle. Design wise it seems so simple and would allow me to clean up some issues communication issues (between passes) I’m not looking for pointers on how to save a line of code or too worried about conventions just now, please. My question is if this approach is being used “around” and if it seems likely to stand up to some fairly heavy use - that would be maybe 500 or so “satz” per pass in the not so far future. thunk ps concerning this and the ‘boid’ design I now have about 50 boids in each of two “waves” and I have established communications between passes. (They are fired! serially) and so on BUT it is just getting awkward as implemented with some redundancy creeping in. Oh no. I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. The problem is that every “boid” leaves a “casing” and the “casing” is all that is left after it gets fired. But it is terrible design to have to expand the “casings” for communications, this is a way to keep it generic so a Framework can get lifted out of this project eventually. Anyway the idea is that each HelperClass assisting the Boid can “throw anything potentially useful” onto one “WhiteBoard” per pass. Then the ControlPanel and other things responsible for figuring out “what happened” can review the WhiteBoard for their specific purposes. ---
**Author:** ![thunk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/e495f1/32.png) [@thunk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thunk)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2010, 2:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whiteboard-class-for-these-boids/185743/2 "2010-03-25T14:37:57Z")
Minor quibble. The code dies not run for me under 1.8.7 white.rb:13:in `method_missing': wrong number of arguments (2 for 1) (ArgumentError) from white.rb:13:in`put\_satz’ from white.rb:56 Secondly it is hard to make sense of the code without some idea as to what it is supposed to do, incomplete code at that. If you could say what the code is supposed to implement, the problem rather than the solution, then we will have something to say about it. It could be a perfect implementation with nothing more to be done or it could be the worst. Without knowing what it is supposed to solve there is little anyone can say beyond, maybe, some minor tweaks. The members of this list will be more than willing to help you, but we are not psychic. ---
**Author:** ![thunk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/e495f1/32.png) [@thunk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thunk)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2010, 2:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whiteboard-class-for-these-boids/185743/3 "2010-03-25T14:52:01Z")
I would be very interested in hearing more about what problem is being solved here too. On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 9:36 AM, Peter H. \< ---
**Author:** ![thunk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/e495f1/32.png) [@thunk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thunk)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2010, 4:32am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whiteboard-class-for-these-boids/185743/4 "2010-03-26T04:32:09Z")
On 3/25/10, thunk [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > [http://gist.github.com/343358](http://gist.github.com/343358) I’m still trying to understand what you’re doing. Sometimes, your verbiage reminds me of rinda, not that I know much about rinda either. Your WhiteBoard might be like a Rinda::TupleSpace…? Perhaps you can to compare and contrast the two? Unfortunately, documentation on rinda looks kinda sparse… but maybe this will help some: [http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/rinda/rdoc/index.html](http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/rinda/rdoc/index.html) ---
**Author:** ![thunk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/e495f1/32.png) [@thunk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thunk)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2010, 10:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whiteboard-class-for-these-boids/185743/5 "2010-03-26T10:19:47Z")
SUMMARY Everything seems to be just working for me, it has rapidly become “domain specific” so I don’t think it makes any sense to post the evolved versions, it will only be 10X more confusing 🙂 One day of experience with it is not enough to say much more. The GOAL for me was to come up with a way for my “disposable” classes to leave information into some sort of system with minimum overhead, no new dependencies. Memory management is not an immediate need concern. This has done the trick for me for now. “All about ‘Boid’”, only semi-serious Somebody with AI training here wrote that these things "probably aren’t real Boids and I have to agree - at least technically. However, since they are useless/meaningless alone, and follow simple rules, and behave as a collection - they have reminded me of “Swarms” months before I read up on official “Swarm Intelligence”. In the last 3 months I have bent everything around them - and even reselected a domain where I see them as having particular utility. The term Agent was used by IBM in a whole other context in the 90’s (as in autonomous negotiating units) and I can’t help thinking of Maxwell Smart talking into his shoe phone 🙂 . I really I think they are more like “Dorts” - but they are likely to take on new abilities and who really knows where Ruby can let them go. i am getting reports out already but i did’t like the way data was getting shuffled around multiple times for lack of a persistent object to post to during “flight”. oh no, the aircraft carrier analogy fits on this too, uncanny, there is some “inflight” communication betw the “pilots” and the ship. so far no need between the pilots - that happins - in a minimalistic, but effective way by organizing multiple “waves”. BTW a friend sent me a picture of an impossible complex plane supposedly of Soviet design and I had just read a spiegel article on the end of WWII “disposable wooden jets” that the Nazi’s were hoping would be a wonder weapon. The pilot, if he returned at all, only did so by parachute. It didn’t work, overall, but the may have been ahead of their time if you think about what electronics could have done… anyway, i could not resist the comparison, and without further todo I give my boid clue#18, and here are my speech opening slides for the talk I don’t intend to give: ``` Its much more not this: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_iTGXYFIkfkA/SYMLhYAs2yI/AAAAAAAAQT8/qLPt8MuVDw8/s1600-h/Biggest_04.jpg than not this: http://gunpoint-3d.com/view-Natter.f.html ``` ---
**Author:** ![thunk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/e495f1/32.png) [@thunk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thunk)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2010, 10:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whiteboard-class-for-these-boids/185743/6 "2010-03-26T10:35:35Z")
PS I meant to mention that I did a quick check to use Marshall Dump and it does not play with the singleton stuff. PickAx 1.9, p421 I have no immediate need for memory balancing or whatever yet, but the pickAx book provides some examples on about the same page.