Hey Stefan, > Depending on how well Julia-generated code performs, some important >> concurrent data structures might be better implemented in C and wrapped. > > > I would argue that until we can implement efficient concurrent data > structures in pure Julia, the work isn't complete. It's ok to use C code as > an interim solution while we're developing this, but in the longer term, we > should not be forced to rely on C to write libraries. >
Think of the implementations in C as though we're dropping into inline assembly for maximizing performance. In actual fact, using alignment directives, padding, SIMD intrinsics, or specialized load/store instructions _is_ pretty much assembly. I don't see value in adding this sort of architecture-specific explicit control to Julia--it negates the high-level, high-productivity aspect if you have to throw in pragmas like assume_aligned in your code for performance reasons. And if you go down that road, then you're competing with C.
