classifying computational frameworks

(posted on 2021-06-25)

here is a classification of four large computational frameworks, according to four criteria:

D: Distributed; whether the framework allows for computation to happen in arbitrarily many places at once, or whether it has to follow a single thread of computation
M: Metaprogrammable; whether code in the framework is able to, at runtime, create new logic of the same class as itself; see also degrees of runtime metaprogrammability
S: Simple Steps; whether the process of going through a single step of computation (whether the system is deterministic or not) is simple, or requires a large amount of work
A: Arbitrary Structure; whether the framework is able to created arbitrarily nested pieces of information, or whether it's restricted to a constant amount of information density over a geometric area

framework	D	M	S	A
lisp/λ-calculus/SKI calculus	N	Y	Y	Y
turing machines	N	N	Y	N
graph rewriting, like wolfram's	Y	N	N	Y
cellular automata	Y	N	Y	N

(posted on 2021-06-25)