Re: [Caml-list] Re: Ant: Efficiency of let/and

[Brian Hurt <bhurt@spnz.org>]

On Tue, 27 Sep 2005, Stefan Monnier wrote:

>> chips, etc.).  The problem is that the theory on how to write race
>> condition/deadlock/livelock -free code isn't there, to my knowledge
>
> I think the theory is pretty much there.  The problem is to put it
> into practice.

I'm not 100% sure it is.  Oh, it is for the "trivial" questions- like will 
this program run to completion and will it return the right answer?  But 
it isn't there yet (to my knowledge) on the more difficult questions, like 
can I automatically tune this program to efficiently use N threads (where 
both N=1 and N ~ millions are interesting values)?  And what is the 
minimum amount of synchronization this program requires at N threads? 
Etc.

IMHO, we need to take synchronization out of the hands of the programmer 
just like we took garbage collection out of the hands of the programmer. 
But, then again, I'm widely regarded as a radical :-).

Brian