An Extension of AgentSpeak(L) and Jason Tailored to Programming and Software Development

Agent programming languages like AgentSpeak(L) – and Jason, as its modern extension/implementation – have features that make them interesting for software development and general-purpose programming, besides AI problems. A main one is the level of abstraction, that eases the design and development of concurrent, reactive, distributed applications. At the same time, being not developed for general-purpose programming and software development in mind, they typically miss elements that are important for that purpose. These weaknesses can negatively impact on their adoption beyond the agent-oriented programming community. Accordingly, in this paper we discuss some features extending the basic model provided by AgentSpeak(L)/Jason, with the purpose of improving its adoption for programming and software development. Such extensions are shown in practice using a Jason extension called Jona.