reference Blackbird #126
reference Blackbird #126
Conversation
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Hi Brad! Merlin is not based on Blackbird. We started from a completely fresh slate and a completely empty codebase, and as far as I recall never shared any code from Blackbird. We attempted to understand design choices from all of the predecessors known to us at the time before coming to our own conclusions for Merlin's design. I have mad respect for those who work and worked on Blackbird (and APGen, and SEQGEN, and ...), because developing a modeling and simulation system of any flavor is not for the faint of heart. But stating that Merlin is "based on" Blackbird and that its code "has diverged" from Blackbird does not comport with my experience of Merlin's inception. The closest we got to sharing code with Blackbird was, I believe, at one point shipping a library for time management that Blackbird developed. That was already enough to be a political problem at the time; I cannot imagine what actually being "based on Blackbird" would have done. The nouns we share ("activities", etc.) are common to the domain of activity planning, and the fact that we provide a Java-based experience also comes from common higher-level requirements (namely: to use a language that non-software-engineers can be expected to use productively; to be able to draw on a pool of talent already familiar with the language used for modeling; and to be able to take experience with Merlin and transfer it productively to other roles). Is there a story or desire behind this PR that we'd like to address? |
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I chatted with @Twisol offline. It was inaccurate based on miscommunication, so I update it. The motivation here is just to acknowledge Blackbird properly. |
| Blackbird's design shed light on the myriad choices made in designing | ||
| Merlin. | ||
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| Predecessors of Merlin and Blackbird, such as [APGen](https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/handle/2014/45571) and [SEQGen](https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/handle/2014/45455), provided a domain-specific language for mission modeling, allowing them to obtain deep, fine-grained information about the composition of a mission model before performing any simulation. |
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The "provided" in this file was changed to "provide" in the other changed file. It would be best if they agreed, although it's a minor nit. (Either "provided" or "provide" is reasonable: "provided" relative to Merlin and "provide" relative to the fact that they're still in use.)
reference Blackbird, on which Merlin is based