On Fri, Apr 06, 2007 at 05:16:16PM -0400, Reed Hedges wrote: > There's also something called Flow-Based Programming that is similar. In > some ways it's closer to VOS since Actors are, I think, more like method > handlers (in VOS terminology).
I don't agree. Flow-based programming is very data-centric, in the sense that it views the system as a connected chain of inputs and outputs and black boxes doing transformations. This is a good fit for certain kinds of data processing where data is streamed through a multistage system (audio/video processsing, certain types of batch processing) but isn't as useful for interactive systems. If each box in a flow programming system is a vobject, and a connection between boxes means sending a message between vobjects, VOS starts out with the assumption that every box is potentially connected to every other box. At that point the flow model isn't particularly useful. VOS grew out of my work in multiagent systems, and it's pretty well understood in that field that agents act independently of one another and their communication/coordination is asynchronous. Thus, the idea that vobjects == actors seems like a natural fit. You could say that the actor model is a design pattern that we happened to stumble upon, and that by recognizing it as such we can take advantage of the existing work on the topic. > But "Actors Model" is more well known and more carefully studied and > defined (though I guess we will be deviating from it) Well, it's a model, not a precise specification. The basic goal here is to define how flow-of-control works in a concurrent VOS application, in a way that is easy for users to grasp and prevents deadlocks and race conditions. -- [ Peter Amstutz ][ [EMAIL PROTECTED] ][ [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] [Lead Programmer][Interreality Project][Virtual Reality for the Internet] [ VOS: Next Generation Internet Communication][ http://interreality.org ] [ http://interreality.org/~tetron ][ pgpkey: pgpkeys.mit.edu 18C21DF7 ]
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