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The SBML community has know little b for a while since they first came to
us, a long time ago, saying roughly "we're much better than you, and we do
everything in a simpler way, understandable by users".

I think (and this is a personal opinion, that does NOT reflect the opinion
of the SBML editors as a whole) this is a worthwhile effort, but
completely different than SBML and CellML.

1) In general, the terser a language is, the more fuzzy but the harder to
interpret it is. If the SBML spec is so long and complicated, it is
because one of our goal is to ensure that everyone interpret an SBML
description exactly the same way. That bears a lot of consequences on
units etc. Terse is good. Unambiguous is better (if you want to exchange
and integrate)

2) I am not sure LISP is a good *description* language. And we need to
separate description of the model structure from description of the
simulation. SBML and CellML are not programming language.

Again this is a personal feeling. At the end I guess the only criteria is
the usefullness for the scientific community.

> Hi all,
>
> Has anyone encountered this before?
>
> http://www.littleb.org/
>
> The little b project is an effort to provide an open source
> <http://www.opensource.org/> language which allows scientists to build
> mathematical models <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_model> of
> complex systems. The initial focus is systems biology
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_biology>. The goal is to stimulate
> widespread sharing and reuse of models.
>
> The little b language is designed to allow biologists to build models
> quickly and easily from shared parts, and to allow theorists to program
> new ways of describing complex systems. Currently, libraries have been
> developed for building ODE
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_equation> models of molecular
> networks in multi-compartment systems such as cellular epithelia.
>
> Little b is based in Common Lisp and contains mechanisms for rule-based
> reasoning, symbolic mathematics and object-oriented definitions. The
> syntax is designed to be terse and human-readable to facilitate
> communication. The environment is both interactive and compilable.
>
> Kind regards,
> James
>
> _______________________________________________
> cellml-discussion mailing list
> cellml-discussion at cellml.org
> http://www.cellml.org/mailman/listinfo/cellml-discussion
>


--
Nicolas LE NOVERE, Computational Neurobiology,
EMBL-EBI, Wellcome-Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SD, UK
Tel: +44(0)1223494521, Fax: +44(0)1223494468, Mob: +44(0)7833147074
http://www.ebi.ac.uk/~lenov, AIM:nlenovere, MSN:nlenovere at hotmail.com

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• [cellml-discussion] little b - shared models built from reusable parts, James Lawson, 07/25/2008
  • [cellml-discussion] little b - shared models built from reusable parts, Catherine Lloyd, 07/25/2008
  • [cellml-discussion] little b - shared models built from reusable parts, Nicolas Le Novere, 07/26/2008
    • [cellml-discussion] little b - shared models built from reusable parts, Tommy Yu, 07/26/2008
      • [cellml-discussion] little b - shared models built from reusable parts, Michael Hucka, 07/29/2008
        • [cellml-discussion] little b - shared models built from reusable parts, Tommy Yu, 07/29/2008

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