From Programming to Modeling - and Back Again

Markus Völter. From Programming to Modeling - and Back Again. IEEE Software, , 2011.

Abstract

What’s the difference between programming and modeling? And should there be one? A long time ago, I started programming with Pascal, C++, and Java, but in the past couple of years, I’ve focused on domain specific languages and model-driven development (MDD). Modeling is a different world from programming, especially because of the mindset and tools involved. But as I thought more about the dichotomy between the two, I concluded that what we really need is a set of composable language modules that express different software concerns—some application-domain specifi c, others more related to technical concerns and thus more generic and reusable. This idea isn’t new, but the time is right to discuss it again, especially as the necessary tools are maturing