Unravelling multi-agent-oriented programming

A fully-fledged programming paradigm based on ideas from multi-agent systems requires a lot more than early agent-oriented programming languages envisaged. More than interaction between autonomous entities, the social level of multi-agent systems as well as the shared environment where the agents are situated also need to be suitably designed. In fact, the abstractions used at each of those three levels are all equally important and interrelated. In this chapter, we discuss JaCaMo, a platform for multi-agent-oriented programming that covers abstractions such as: beliefs, goals, and plans at the agent level; groups, roles, functional schemes (i.e., social plans), and norms at the organizational level; and artifacts and workspaces at the environment level. The chapter also includes a simple multi-agent system example to illustrate the approach.