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Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:15:37 -0300
Message-ID: <d1c554290909111115x4d897c47g596a85bbcaf86bcd@mail.gmail.com>
From: Iruata Souza <iru.muzgo@gmail.com>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
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Subject: Re: [9fans] "Blocks" in C
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On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 1:40 PM, Bakul Shah <bakul+plan9@bitblocks.com> wrot=
e:
> On Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:31:28 PDT David Leimbach <leimy2k@gmail.com> =C2=
=A0wrote:
>>
>> Having wrestled with this stuff a little bit, and written "something". =
=C2=A0I
>> can immediately see how one can get away from needing to "select" in cod=
e so
>> much, and fire off blocks to handle client server interactions etc. =C2=
=A0It's
>> kind of neat.
>
> alt(3) is a nicer way to avoid select().
>
> I still say CSP is the way to go. In plan9/limbo channels
> work across coroutines in one process. Seems to me extending
> channels to work across preemptive threads (running on
> multiple cores) or across processes or machines is might lead
> to a more elegant and no less performant model. =C2=A0It seems
> to be a more natural model when you have zillions of
> processors on a chip (like TileraPro64, with zillion =3D 64).
> They can't all go to shared external memory without paying a
> substantial cost but neighbor to neighbor communication is
> far faster (tilera claims 37Tbps onchip interconnect b/w and
> 50Gbps of I/O bw).
>
> It is nice that a Apple C block treats all non local
> variables (except __block ones) as read only variables. =C2=A0But
> every time I look at blocks I see new problems. What if a
> block calls a function that modifies a global like in the
> example below? If this works, what is the point of treating
> globals as readonly? If this doesn't work, how do ensure
> trash_x() causes a seg fault, particularly when it is defined
> in another file?
>
> int x;
>
> void trash_x() { x =3D -42; }
>
> ... ^{ trash_x(); } ...
>
> My view: if you can't solve a problem cleanly and in a
> general way with a feature, it does not belong in a language
> (but may belong in a library).
>

for those who still care
http://libdispatch.macosforge.org/