A Programming Paradigm based on Agent-Oriented Abstractions

More and more the notion of agent appears in different contexts of computer science, often with different meanings. Main ones are Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Distributed AI, where agents are exploited as a technique to develop systems exhibiting some kind of intelligent behavior. In this paper, we introduce a further perspective, shifting the focus from AI to computer programming and programming languages. In particular, we consider agents and related concepts as generalpurpose abstractions useful for programming software systems in general, conceptually extending object-oriented programming with features that – we argue – are effective to tackle some main challenges of modern software development. The main contribution of the work is the definition of a conceptual space framing the basic features that characterize the agent-oriented approach as a programming paradigm, and its validation in practice by using a platform called JaCa, with real-world programming examples.