On 2/19/07, skaller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, 2007-02-19 at 10:44 +0100, Ramon Diaz-Uriarte wrote: > > On 2/16/07, skaller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Fri, 2007-02-16 at 14:49 +0100, Ramon Diaz-Uriarte wrote: > > > > On 2/16/07, skaller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > It takes time and effort to write good docs -- much less to > > > spout off in an email. > > > Sure. No criticism in my email. > > There's nothing wrong with criticism, there should be more > of it :) Just limited resources .. plus it's more fun writing
I'll try being mean and harsh (and of course, continue saying "not me") next time :-). > a compiler than documenting it :) > > > > Now, following with the tradition of "it is sooo easy to ask for > > stuff": my superficial understanding is that distributed, concurrent, > > and parallel computing using shared memory can be a lot harder and > > error prone (e.g., "Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Comp. Progr", > > from van Roy and Haridi). If at all possible, when/why/how to choose > > Felix over Erlang (or Oz) and how to complement both (your sentence of > > "Felix to create ... that Erlang would manage ...") would be something > > great to have in the docs. > > Because it isn't a lot harder, that's crap. Message passing > is easier to analyse, but some kinds of things will require > much more complex programs. > Please, do not make Van Roy and Haridi responsible for my above statement. It might just be my lack of understanding. > Felix provides two kinds of threading: your ordinary > pre-emptive threads and fibres. Both use channels for > communication. Channels are actually synchronisation > primitives not data pipes, but they can and usually are > used for transfering ownership of data. So that's basically > message passing.. except the data is in shared address > space so it's very fast. > > Of course you can also use mutexes etc. With fibres this > kind of things is rarely needed, since they can't be > pre-empted. > Aha. I need to go through this much, much more carefully. But this looks really mind blowing. Thanks a lot for the comments! Do you know where I can find a (gentle) introduction to these issues? I actually think "I just don't get Felix". > So the actual model is a variant of CSP plus shared memory. > An arbitrary program isn't easy to reason about .. but > it is possible to write code which is if you want. > > Just as an example -- fibres cannot deadlock! > > Hehe! This is a trick statement. The way the model > is built, if fibres deadlock they're unreachable > and get reaped by the collector, and so they don't > exist, and hence can't be deadlocked. > That is funny. Sounds a lot like magic, though ... Thanks a lot again for your comments. Best, R. > > -- > John Skaller <skaller at users dot sf dot net> > Felix, successor to C++: http://felix.sf.net > -- Ramon Diaz-Uriarte Statistical Computing Team Structural Biology and Biocomputing Programme Spanish National Cancer Centre (CNIO) http://ligarto.org/rdiaz ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Felix-language mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/felix-language
