Compositionality in Programming Languages
An important aspect of denotational semantics of programming languages is compositionality, by which the denotation of a program is constructed from denotations of its parts. For example consider the expression "
The Actor model provides a modern and very general way the compositionality of programs can be analyzed. Scott and Strachey proposed that the semantics of programming languages be reduced to the semantics of the lambda calculus and thus inherit the denotational semantics of the lambda calculus. However, it turned out that concurrent computation could not be implemented in the lambda calculus (see Indeterminacy in concurrent computation). Thus there arose the problem of how to provide modular denotational semantics for concurrent programming languages. One solution to this problem is to use the Actor model of computation. In Actor model, programs are Actors that are sent Eval messages with the address of an environment (explained below) so that programs inherit their denotational semantics from the denotational semantics of the Actor model (an idea published in Hewitt ).
Read more about this topic: Denotational Semantics Of The Actor Model
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