STELLA (programming language)

STELLA (short for Systems Thinking, Experimental Learning Laboratory with Animation; also marketed as iThink) is a visual programming language for system dynamics modeling introduced by Barry Richmond in 1985. The program, distributed by isee systems (formerly High Performance Systems) allows users to run models created as graphical representations of a system using four fundamental building blocks. STELLA has been used in academia as a teaching tool and has been utilized in a variety of research and business applications. The program has received positive reviews, being praised in particular for its ease of use and low cost. While working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1960s, Jay Wright Forrester developed the earliest understanding of system dynamics which he argued could only be understood using models. Dartmouth College systems science professor Barry Richmond founded High Performance Systems in 1984. With the financial support of Analog Devices, Inc. and technical support from Apple Computer, he developed STELLA (short for Structural Thinking, Experimental Learning Laboratory with Animation) at his company. He presented the prototype for the visual programming language in 1985 at the System Dynamics Society's annual conference in a paper entitled "STELLA: Software for Bringing System Dynamics to the Other 98%". Within that paper, Richmond mused on the study of system dynamics: "If this stuff really is so great, then why hasn't the field 'taken off'?" Steve Peterson, a colleague of Richmond's, reflected after his death in 2002 that Richmond held the belief that modeling was a tool everyone should be using and that that notion was reflected in Richmond's work. He quoted a 1994 paper in which Richmond described STELLA as "quite unique, quite powerful, and quite broadly useful as a way of thinking and or learning. It's also capable of being quite transparent–leveraging the way we learn biology, manage our businesses, or run our personal lives".