Threads are very much in the C tradition - minimalistic. If you code in C you must know what you're doing anyway. C is by no means a high level or safe language.
But until an automatically parallelizing safe language with good performance becomes popular - this is what we got. You just have to rely on simple conventions to minimize the risks. --- Michael Scharf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Why Threads Are A Bad Idea: > http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2006/EECS-2006-1.pdf > > From the article: > "Threads are a seemingly straightforward adaptation of the > dominant sequential model of computation to concurrent > systems. Languages require little or no syntactic changes to > support threads, and operating systems and architectures > have evolved to efficiently support them. Many technologists > are pushing for increased use of multithreading in software > in order to take advantage of the predicted increases in > parallelism in computer architectures. In this paper, I > argue that this is not a good idea. Although threads seem to > be a small step from sequential computation, in fact, they > represent a huge step. They discard the most essential and > appealing properties of sequential computation: > understandability, predictability, and determinism. Threads, > as a model of computation, are wildly nondeterministic, and > the job of the programmer becomes one of pruning that > nondeterminism. Although many research techniques improve > the model by offering more effective pruning, I argue that > this is approaching the problem backwards. Rather than > pruning nondeterminism, we should build from essentially > deterministic, composable components. Nondeterminism should > be explicitly and judiciously introduced where needed, > rather than removed where not needed. The consequences of > this principle are profound. I argue for the development of > concurrent coordination languages based on sound, composable > formalisms. I believe that such languages will yield much > more reliable, and more concurrent programs." ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better pen pal. Text or chat with friends inside Yahoo! Mail. See how. http://overview.mail.yahoo.com/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
