begin quoting Christopher Smith as of Fri, Mar 30, 2007 at 05:57:16PM -0700: > Stewart Stremler wrote: > > This sort of reasoning alwasy makes me want to grind my teeth. :) > > The reasoning isn't entirely faulty. A more complete rationalization > would be: "I have assumed that the language designers thought there were > problems that should be solved with threads; otheerwise why would they > have been added to the Tcl core."
Still no better. Don't get me wrong ... I *understand* the reasoning -- it's saying "I'm out of my depth due to capability/time/interest, so I'll assume that someone who has more talen/experience/interest than I is actually doing the appropriate analysis and is making a better decision than I could." The problem is, this is not often the case. Stuff is done because it seems like a good idea at the time, or because it was a challenge, or it was fun, or it was drop-dead easy so why not? Even very smart, very good, very talented people make mistakes, or pursue "unwise" paths. Not everything pans out. > > NO problem _must_ be solved with threads. They're merely a tool to > > produce a simpler design (within bounds) -- and it's all running as > > part of one huge sequential program anyway, it's on a Von Neumann > > machine. > > Increasingly, modern computer systems more closely resemble non-Von > Neumann machines that sort of simulate Von Neumann machines (aided and > abetted by the OS and platform API's). Well, sorta. When we start slapping an ALU on every memory cell, then perhaps we can declare the Von Neumann architecture dead. :) [snip - coroutines] > There are other abstractions as well. I tend to like the declarative > ones, but yeah, they all have issues. Pick your poison... -- There's also the contrarian character flaw to take into account... Stewart Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
