Why another neural simulator?
PSICS was written to address a class of problems that can’t be handled with existing tools: the efficient simulation of the stochastic behavior of kinetic scheme ion channels on complex geometries. Since it also computes continuous channel behavior, there is some overlap with other systems, but this kind of choice is a good thing. It helps improve software quality in general and introduces new ideas that may or may not take hold depending how users respond to them. It is also something of a myth to imagine that the community would be better served by concentrating development effort on a few large projects. As was eloquently been explained in The Mythical Man Month back in 1975, the dynamics of the software development process leads to drastically reduced efficiency as group sizes grow. The more effective approach is to focus on cross-system compatibility and modularization. These are core aspects of PSICS with its simple declarative file formats and standalone core computations.
