I can't see the link from covariance/contravariance in collections to XML or images. I've never seen 6GB of XML as interesting, but I suppose if it contains something interesting.. :)
On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 3:43 AM, Russel Winder <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, 2012-07-30 at 21:52 +0100, Kevin Wright wrote: > > The basic idea is that if you "insert" an Apple into a collection of > > Oranges, then you get back a collection of Fruit. Both the new > collection > > and the original are immutable, with the original continuing to be a > simple > > collection of Apples. > > I have to admit that whilst a lot of programming is about transforming > apples to oranges and comparing apples and oranges, the interesting > stuff happens with very big data structures, for example 6GB XML > documents, or 256MB images. You do not deal with these things by value > per se. The solution at the moment is to switch from a shared memory > perspective to a message passing perspective, a return to > object-oriented programming – which most current Java, Scala, Groovy, C > ++, Python, Ruby, etc codes that I have seen do not employ. Go and > Groovy/GPars, and others, are trying to alter this. Immutability is > critically important, the question is at what scale. Functional > programming, actors, dataflow, CSP, all have slightly different > architectural views on this. The core issue is surely to remove > shared-memory multi-threading as the main applications programmer tool > of concurrency and parallelism. After all locks are designed exactly to > stop parallelism > > -- > Russel. > > ============================================================================= > Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: > sip:[email protected] > 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: [email protected] > London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
