TL;DR: 1. Threads are a feature, one that will unlock new exciting things we can do and make existing features better (namely child_process.fork()). 2. "We don't have that feature" is not a feature, is not a pro. 3. Being dogmatic about what others ought do is bad: accept if not embrace input liberally. 4. Doing threads, safe concurrency right is what makes Rust so attractive, and Node can do it safely, cleanly too and nearly did, in the "isolates" branch. https://github.com/joyent/node/tree/isolates
Onwards: On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 11:32:56AM -0700, Mark Hahn wrote: > @rektide, are you saying that joyent is asleep at the wheel because they > are stopping the community from using threads?� > The community doesn't want threads because they violate the founding > principle of Node, which is to use non-blocking event loops and get rid of > threads. "violate the founding principle"? "community doesn't want"? As for "doesn't want" and "founding principles," before threads became an awful horrible thing the Node community would have nothing to do with ever, there was a feature that got canned for being too complicating called Isolates, that, shock and awe, Node leads were hard at work on which would have added threading as a drop in replacement for child_process.fork(). Certainly no one was calling the feature "anti-Node" at the time, it would have been an implementation detail, offered the same functionality as already exists in Node today, and would have made us capable of doing more. https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/nodejs/zLzuo292hX0/F7gqfUiKi2sJ https://github.com/joyent/node/tree/isolates Threading is not evil. Shared state is evil. Which is why the rest of the JavaScript world has Transferables, a way to move ownership of an object from one isolated thread/container to another. Processes preservation [read: apropo exclamative], Node is already a multi-reactor not a reactor, and there's no harm, nothing but technical gain (faster context switches, Transferables), from allowing that multi-reactor to run on threads as easily as it runs on processes. Aside from the work to get there, there's no cause to keep ourselves locked in to just using processes. http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/common-dom-interfaces.html#transfer-a-transferable-object I'm not at all saying Joyent is asleep at the wheel. They punted on this topic, this big hard hairy to implement topic: fine. It does hurt us, is a killer feature a mature runtime ought have in it's toolkit, but I have faith eventually we'll go to bat on the topic again in a serious manner in due time and I'm not sweating the innings lost between now and then. In the mean time, Joyent has been doing great things with Node and I'm delighted they continue doing so much to further Node. I know Ryah has gone on twitter and said he still sees Node as a web runtime. Isaac has similarly lamented allowing other languages to play in Node's pool. Online discussions have a lot of people defending node's lack of threading. I think much of this makes us look bad, (hipster-ish, dogmatic, and even jingoistic), to soapbox about what this thing is for, to rather than find value and positives define negatives and ills, to proscribe. For comparison, I'd champion Larry Wall's Perl: a super flexible language, but what I love more than anything else is how a-dogmatic it was, an explicitly post-modern language with an explicitly post-modern culture, where people didn't tell each other what to think or do and couldn't do otherwise in any kind of definitive manner because there were a dozen ways to do a thing: liberty came standard. Even if you were using it to shoot yourself in the foot, the guy on the other side of the lab can be using feature X or factor Y to great effect. Make options available, help people see what things are possible. That's humble, that's respectful, and speaks to an understanding that lasting things grow and change and take on new roles. If we knew all the answers, we'd have built ourselves all-too-sterile and flavorless an environment. Threads are great. Fact. Better than processes (at at least context switching and transfering objects). Fact. And like most great powers, they come with great responsibility (more than processes, fact). Which isolates, WebMessaging all support, all work to harness the capabilities of while insuring they are used responsibly. Fwiw, Rust is going to be a serious language to look at because it has such deeply ingrained respect for safe concurrent containers. And continuing my opining, Node owes itself isolates, it's parallel: threads are faster context switches than processes, and threads allow Transferable, both are clear safe wins with zero risk or cost to non-users. Threading is a feature, one from a usage standpoint that need not be any different than child_process.fork(), and it's one I hope Node.js comes back to to continue being a pre-eminent and delighting runtime for all users. Happy hacking all, -r This thread was forked from the Crockford fork YNode thread below, https://groups.google.com/d/msg/nodejs/QsygwyrXi5U/e9enAhGiVlQJ > On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 11:19 AM, Ted Young <[1]t...@radicaldesigns.org> > wrote: > > I take it no one knows what he's actually complaining about? > Ted I've got some idea what Nuno is groaning about. :) Threads-a-go-go is a pretty daft silly thing. It's certainly not the safe sane shared-nothing threading that keeps Node & JS safe. That responsible multi-threading work was attempted in the 'isolates' branch of Node.js. I would definitely not push the threads-a-go-go work upstream. :) > On Sep 15, 2012, at 10:52 AM, Nuno Job <[2]nunojobpi...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > This again? Oh mah gawd. :) > > Sent from my iPhone > > On Sep 15, 2012, at 6:18 PM, rektide <[3]rekt...@voodoowarez.com> > wrote: > > On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 04:56:40PM +0200, Arnout Kazemier wrote: > > "Pull request or it didn't happen" > > Hi: > > [4]https://github.com/xk/node-threads-a-gogo , or preferrably some > better isolated manner of > multi-threading with Transferable objects. Sorry for not linking some Isolates earlier, which is the unspoken answer to "better isolated" above. -- Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ Posting guidelines: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. To post to this group, send email to nodejs@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to nodejs+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en
