Modeling Computation: A Comparative Synthesis of TMK and ZD

How do we build computational models of computation itself? This paper analyzes two such modeling languages from the perspective of building a third language which integrates their advantages. The ZD language Liver & Allemang, 1985, Allemang, 1997] models software components and conngurations in support of veriication and reuse. models intelligent systems in support of failure-driven learning and other reasoning tasks. I claim that these objectives are ultimately diierent perspectives on the same problem, thus suggesting that the integration of the languages is possible. I further claim these diierent perspectives do lead to substantive diierences in capabilities, thus suggesting that the integration of the languages may provide signiicant beneets over either language viewed in isolation.