On Fri, Mar 15, 2002, guy keren wrote about "Re: pthreads question": > or online tutorials. i'll offer my usual plug (what took me so long? ;) ) > for lupg, http://www.actcom.co.il/~choo/lupg/tutorials/ , and click on the > 'Multi-Threaded Programming With The Pthreads Library' link.
I know it's a matter of taste, but I usually find learning a non-trivial subject (like Posix threads) taking hours (at the very least), and it's not very convenient to sit by a terminal for hours upon hours reading from the screen. A pile of dead-tree sheets (i.e., a book or printout) is more convenient for me. And if you don't happen to work/study in a place that lets you print hundreds of pages for free (or if you work in a place where it's just as easy to order a book as it is to print one out), the alternative is to get hold of a real book. > (some people > beleife in free software. i believe in free documentation). Anybody still remember the term "library"? It used to be a place where you go, lend a book for a couple of weeks without paying (or paying a very small sum), and then return it without needed to buy it. I read a few good books in the Technion that way, and a few other good books in AT&T's library. For some reason the great concept of a public library has been seriously decaying in the last decade - not only it's harder to find the books you want, but you usually don't have things like software, musics and videos in a library. I remember taking out music CDs in a public library in NJ - how come it doesn't exist in Israel? Why should the RIAA (or the Israeli equivalent) get rights that book publishers never had? Why does taking out a book in a library costs pennies and you can take it for a week or two, but taking out a video in a video rental place costs 10 shekels and you get it for 2 days? O tempora, o mores :( Free documentation is nice, but I'm much less fanatic about it than about free software. Remember that even a relatively-expensive book costs $50 (compare this to hundreds of dollars for software), and you also get some added convenience over the free alternative (if, like me, you like to read physical books). > btw, the best way to learn a subject, is to write a tutorial about it, or > prepare a _thorought_ lecture. you'd be surprised how effective these > methods can be - provided you are a profficient programmer, with a good Even in this case, you'll need a good source of information to base your tutorial on. If you read a couple of manuals and didn't figure out why/when pthread_detach() is needed, you're not likely to be able to explain it well to the class (or you'll explain something but do it wrong or miss the imporant things). > theoretical background. when that's the case - the concepts are usually > not realy new - if you did enough multi-process programming, switching > into multi-threading is much easier then if you have never done any > multi-process programming. (multi process is NOT client-server - that's a > very simplistic model, which teaches only a small part of the IPC world). This is very true. The book I recommended is specifically about Posix Threads, and not parallel/distributed programming in general. When I read that book I was already quite experienced in these things and all the relevant concepts (semaphores, deadlocks, shared memory etc.) - just not using the Posix API. But I think you can read that book without previous experience, and it will explain everything you need to know. -- Nadav Har'El | Friday, Mar 15 2002, 2 Nisan 5762 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |----------------------------------------- Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Guarantee: this email is 100% free of http://nadav.harel.org.il |magnetic monopoles, or your money back! ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
