From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 04:50:39 -0700 From: "Roman V. Shaposhnik" In-reply-to: <20080730113517.GA1853@polynum.com> To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Message-id: <1217418639.5036.31.camel@goose.sun.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT References: <488F6427.1050109@sun.com> <20080729191205.E907E5B77@mail.bitblocks.com> <20080730113517.GA1853@polynum.com> Subject: Re: [9fans] current state of thread programming Topicbox-Message-UUID: f4e3664e-ead3-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Wed, 2008-07-30 at 13:35 +0200, tlaronde@polynum.com wrote: > On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 12:12:05PM -0700, Bakul Shah wrote: > > > > It is slightly depressing to think that the situation has not really > > changed since EWD wrote this in 1975. It will take some young > > whippersnapper of a Dijkstra or Hoare or Strachey or Iverson or Backus > > to find the critical insight that will make reasoning about parallel > > algorithm no more difficult than sequential ones. > > Is the human thought process parallel? No. But to give you an example of why that shouldn't matter I would like to note that the human thought is, in my opinion, finite. Yet, we have developed very nice and efficient tools for comprehending and reasoning about infinity. > The most efficient is to have tools that match the way our brains work > (or not...). I'm not convinced our brains are "parallel" (at least mines > are not). I disagree on philosophical grounds ;-) It's been one of the major engineering follies to always approach design from a "just follow the nature" standpoint. No wonder that before the Wright brothers everybody thought the best way to fly is to flap some kind of wings. Thanks, Roman. P.S. I guess, we are getting way off topic here.