When we decided to write down our experiences of NetLogo in the form of a book with a view to helping others to become familiar with its use, we realized that it would not be sufficient to project these as a series of problems and solutions making use of the language; leaning on the experience gained over previous years, we decided that we would need to start by taking a step back and to engage in the creation of a programming guide for users who, in many cases, had no experience of other programming languages (although the tutorial provided by the creators of NetLogo on their website is very comprehensive and indispensable to every user, our students and collaborators were demanding a more structured learning process).

We have therefore attempted to write an ambitious book with the aim of meeting the needs of readers who are seeing NetLogo for the first time, perhaps with no prior knowledge of programming, perhaps with no prior knowledge of modeling, and at the same time going into less apparent detail, for those who have already had some experience of this tool. We hope that we have managed to achieve our goal and that we do not disappoint.