Students developing software for holonic system research can be aided by a platform that provides the basic infrastructure for such software. The paper formulates a set of requirements for such a platform, based on the properties of holonic systems, design principles for holonic systems, and recommended techniques for software developers. The paper also presents the HolonEve Platform, implemented in C#, that was developed to meet the requirements. The Platform does not presuppose any particular holonic reference architecture, nor does it enforce any functional distinctions between holons, making the Platform suitable for a wide range of holonic architectures. The design principles and the way that HolonEve meets the requirements are contributions of the paper for the holonic system research community to adopt in their own research. The experience of students using the HolonEve Platform shows that it accelerates the development of such research software and that the Platform effectively runs a system with a few thousand simple holons.