From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: tlaronde@polynum.com Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:07:40 +0200 To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Message-ID: <20080730180740.GA1505@polynum.com> References: <488F6427.1050109@sun.com> <20080729191205.E907E5B77@mail.bitblocks.com> <20080730113517.GA1853@polynum.com> <1217418639.5036.31.camel@goose.sun.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <1217418639.5036.31.camel@goose.sun.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i Subject: Re: [9fans] current state of thread programming Topicbox-Message-UUID: f6d939d8-ead3-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 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) http://www.kergis.com/ Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89 250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C