Re: [9fans] current state of thread programming

[tlaronde@polynum.com]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:11:19AM -0600, andrey mirtchovski wrote:
> found this snippet today and decided to share it with the list. every
> once in a while a look at how "the rest of the world" does things is
> beneficial :)
>
> "I don't know about you, but every time I have to program with threads
> and shared resources, I want to remove my face incrementally with a
> salad fork. Locks, mutexes, the synchronized keyword; all of these
> things can strike fear into the heart of a green developer. Most
> seasoned developers just fall into a rut of depression when it's time
> for multi-threading. Developers like me simply talk our way out of it.
> It's easier than thinking."

On the same subject, this quote from Donald E. Knuth, Volume 4
fascicle 0 (new addition to The Art of Computer Programming, published
in may 2008)---Preface:

	"Furthermore, as in earlier volumes of this serie, I'm
	intentionnally concentrating almost entirely on _sequential_
	algorithms, even though computers are increasingly able to carry out
	activities in parallel. I'm unable to judge what ideas about
	parallelism are likely to be useful five or ten years from now, let
	alone fifty, so I happily leave such questions to others who are
	wiser than I. Sequential methods, by themselves, already test the
	limits of my own ability to discern what the artful programmers of
	tomorrow will want to know."

And as an illustration of the "fun", the ongoing discussion on NetBSD
kernel mailing list _between_ 1:1 and SA threading models (when the person
working on SA revival proposes "vel" : 1:1 or/and SA ---pickup the one
you want or need for backward compatibility), discussion with
an amount of technical arguments of 5% or less.
--
Thierry Laronde (Alceste) <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                 http://www.kergis.com/
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