On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 11:35 PM, Hudson, Rick <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey Mark, > ParallelArray and index are left out because of our desire to provide a few > good methods that help/force programmers to think about parallel algorithms > and not just speeding up sequential algorithms. Array map is really just > syntactic sugar for for loops and invites thinking that depends on order. For > ParallelArray map we felt that the value was the semantically important thing > and the user should not be distracted by the index. Not having index > available is one step towards thinking in more parallel ways.
Hi Rick, the claim made in the paragraph above seems to be the core argument. I respect the kind of argument you're making -- programmer psychology is important, and it is our responsibility as language designers to take it into account, and to help steer programmers towards certain ways of thinking about the problem and away from others. Sometimes these psychological issues have no corresponding formal basis, but are still important nevertheless. Arguments by non-psychologists like us about psychology can often be fuzzy, but this does not relieve us of responsibility of taking these into account. However, I don't have any intuition that supports the specific claim. Let's take "map" specifically. How/why might including index and the array itself distract the programmer from parallel thinking? First, do we agree that there's no formal problem, and the issue is only psychology? If so, perhaps you could provide some examples that would help illustrate the psychological issue you have in mind? At this point, I just don't get it. -- Cheers, --MarkM _______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
