Re: [9fans] "Blocks" in C

[Daniel Lyons <fusion@storytotell.org>]

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On Sep 3, 2009, at 9:44 AM, David Leimbach wrote:

> I'm not 100% sure why the heck they did it this way, which is  
> totally different from any other version of concurrent programming  
> setup I've seen, except maybe that Apple likes to "think different"?

This API looks a lot to me like doing event-driven programming with  
jQuery. It lets you structure the code about the same as you would  
blocking, single-threaded code. That's the main benefit. The new stuff  
isn't intended to help you do Erlang-style concurrency or run on  
clusters. It's intended to help regular developers spawn a couple  
threads when it might help a little. Ease of use to the developer is  
priority 1 here.

Apple's strategy is, I think, fairly transparent: they want to make  
programming easier, and they want to make programming all of their  
different platforms seem similar. It works both intellectually (if  
they are similar, it's less to learn) and emotionally (it feels like a  
good investment to learn one, because it might at least apply to the  
others.) When you don't have the dominant platform, it's wise to cater  
to the laziest developers, because they are the ones who make the  
platform seem large and inviting to the customers. The more fun they  
make programming, the more it helps their bottom line.

—
Daniel Lyons


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