NetLogo / NetLogo/models

A criticism of the Dining Philosopher sample model

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Dominant language
NetLogo
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Forks
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Description

The go command includes

ask one-of philosophers [ update ]

which kind of defeats the original purpose of this problem (concurrent deadlock) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dining_philosophers_problem#Problems

Removing the one-of is still not a good illustration of the problem since a philosopher in the same tick can pick up two forks.

I recommend updating the Info tab with a discussion of this issue. Or implementing a concurrent version as a new switch in the interface so the current behaviour remains unless someone selects concurrency.

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the Dining Philosopher sample's go command and Info tab. Compare the current one-of philosophers [ update ] behavior with the requested concurrency discussion or interface switch, then confirm that the sample clearly explains or demonstrates the deadlock scenario while preserving its current behavior by default.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
distributed-systems
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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