Re: [9fans] current state of thread programming

[tlaronde@polynum.com]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 04:50:39AM -0700, Roman V. Shaposhnik wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-07-30 at 13:35 +0200, tlaronde@polynum.com wrote:
>
> > 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.

When I spoke about "tools", I meant "programming tools". Computers are
already parallel, multi-task. There are already "collaborative" between
devices that have their own processing capabilities distinct from the
CPU(s); between users, or between tasks (real processes) of a same user.

But I do not believe that a programming tool could transform magically
the dumping of a programmer's brains (called a program source) and find
magically parallelism if the programmer has not thought of the thing
(primarily from the data structure point of view), since, at least for
my limited capacities, I may organize task in parallel, but I find
sequential solutions (an algorithm is defined for me as a kind of
elementary, atomic process; the organization, articulation of the
program is engineering, not algorithmics).
--
Thierry Laronde (Alceste) <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                 http://www.kergis.com/
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