The impact of programming paradigms on the efficiency of an individual-based simulation model

We look in detail at an individual-based simulation of the spread of barley yellow dwarf virus. The need for a very large number of individual plants and aphids along with multiple runs using different model parameters mean that it is important to keep memory and processor requirements within reasonable bounds. We present implementations of the model in both imperative and object-oriented programming languages, particularly noting aspects relating to ease of implementation and runtime performance. Finally, we attempt to quantify the cost of some of the decisions made in terms of their memory and processor time requirements.