Hi Paolo, Although I'm sure that your post is very interesting with the right mindset, I have a problem understanding the connection with Python. I know that it's exactly what you are complaining about, i.e. that Python developers appear not to care much about this deep Java/C++ issue. However, if you mean to do anything about it, you need to first understand yourself why it is so -- and the following reason is by far not enough:
> As a matter of fact, this work is unsurprisingly often totally ignored > in many discussions about Python's memory model. I'm not surprised > because it's complex stuff, and understanding it doesn't matter for > today's Python programming. The most obvious misunderstanding, in my opinion, is that in Java or C++ it's about fields reads and writes, whereas in Python it's about any operation on any built-in type -- which can be for example reading or writing attributes, or insert()ing in a list, or doing setdefault() on a dictionary, or... any complex operation. This means that you cannot *at all* reduce the problem to field reads and field writes. As long as the discussion at the level of Java or C++ is only about fields, it's going to be ignored as "mostly uninteresting" by the Python folks. On the other hand, the links you posted about nonblockinghashmap are indeed interesting in this context. From a Python point of view, what is left to discuss is whether these hash maps offer enough "consistency" behavior to be usable on Python's default memory model. Or maybe it's not that interesting any more now that PyPy tends not to use a lot of dictionaries any more (the attributes of objects are not in a hash map, internally). I am myself just expressing vague, uninformed opinions again. But the final point is that this really needs someone motivated to experiment with PyPy (or CPython), and as long as no-one shows up, it will mostly be just "moving air around", i.e. wasting time to discuss this too much in depth. A bientôt, Armin. _______________________________________________ pypy-dev@codespeak.net http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/pypy-dev
