Talk:Model of computation

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request for definitions[edit]

The article comparison of application virtual machines points to this article to define register machine, stack machine and random access machine, but this article doesn't define these ... !? linas (talk) 22:05, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also, primitive operations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.228.7.7 (talk) 00:45, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The article quantum computing points to this article to define model of computation, but this article does not include the various quantum models in its list. Would help greatly if someone could contribute towards this. chtnnh (talk) 17:25, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This article is wrong, incomplete and misses the point[edit]

The cited book by Savage is good, it describes what is needed for this article in the preface and first section of the introductory chapter.

The article is wrong because it mixes models of computation with computation complexity. Those are two different subjects. The model of computation is about how an abstract (or concrete) machine works, i.e. what parts has and which rules use to compute. Also what kind of computations, not all models of computation are Turing complete, i.e. not all are general purpose machines, some only recognize some kind of languages, for example a finite state automaton can just recognize a regular language. On the other side computational complexity, more correctly algorithm analysis, measures the efficiency of an algorithm. In practice an algorithm is expressed in a programming language and executed in a computing machine, to know what is needed to know what to measure, depends of the model of computation of the computing machine.

Is incomplete, because it should mention different classes of languages, i.e. things like the Chomsky hierarchy. Also somge computer architecture implementing computin models. Although the Random Access Machine is the predominant model, is not the only one. There are other models which are used to design specialized electronic circuits.

The article misses the point mentioning different programming languages paradigms. That is also a different subject, which has as basis a model of computation, but has a different goal. How an algorithm is expressed in different kinds of programming languages, each based in some model of computation.

What to do? This article should be written by volunteers with the right background, those who can read the cited book. This job is not for hackers it requires studies in computer science, not just to be a programmer. Although they can learn that from the cited book but it will take a lot of time for those readers without the needed background. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2806:106E:B:C6E9:174:9FC8:E165:A58F (talk) 12:29, 27 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is a kind of vandalism or sabotage going on in Wikipedia?[edit]

In this an other articles I have reviewed older versions of the article, and the old version was better than the actual.

In this article I reviewed the last in the first history page, and has more correct concepts than the actual one, although it says that is an stub.

That may be a product of the arrogance of some Wikipedia keepers and/or some groups who feel that their interests are affected by Wikipedia. Sounds to a conspiracy theory, but the world is crazy enough to not discard such possibility. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2806:106E:B:C6E9:174:9FC8:E165:A58F (talk) 12:42, 27 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not be arrogant. If something is wrong in the current version, or worse than in previous version, please describe the issue explicitly. D.Lazard (talk) 16:42, 27 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please revert to a better version and write a warning in the actual version for the errors in it[edit]

There are many errors in this article, not present in previous versions. Apart of the misconceptions mentioned above, it is bad written, very repetitive and wrong. See for example the categories section, it has a wrong understanding of the Church-Turing thesis. The person who wrote it, understood that the λ-calculus and Turing machines are both equivalent to a some kind of thing called abstract machine, so both models are similar models of computation. That is totally wrong, one thing is that no computing model can compute more things than Turing machines and λ-calculus (and recursive functions and Post machines and predicate calculus and random access machines and ICL and other studied in computer theory) and other thing is that they have an equivalent structure. There is a correspondence because one can build any Turing machine within λ-calculus and implement λ-calculus with a Turing machine, which is used to support the Church-Turing thesis, and other thing their similarity. A Turing machine use tape to read and write symbols, has an state, while the λ-calculus don't use the notion of state. Random access machines were developed by John von Neumann inspired by the Universal Turing Machine, a programmable Turing machine. Both compute transforming the state of the machine.

The expressive power is not what is said in the article, the author of that confuse it with the notion of computational power.

The actual article should have a warning about having many mistakes instead of the single source, that source, the Savage book is fine and sufficient to write this article, but was not read by those who wrote all the mistakes in this article.