[nzlug] Threading / Parallel Programming Languages

[Matthew Diesch]

Fortress sounds interesting but I've always liked Ada / Occam for the way
they handle parallel programming - i.e. natively as part of the language not
some half-arsed add-on

On 20/10/06, Robin Sheat <robin at kallisti.net.nz> wrote:
>
> On Friday 20 October 2006 02:53, Daniel Pittman wrote:
> > Threads are one of the worst developments in programming in the last
> > fifty years -- they give up comprehensible ordering of events, memory
> > protection and performance in return for the illusion of responsive
> > code.
> I have to disagree here. Threads make things possible that otherwise would
> be
> very difficult, if not impossible. Doing a long running calculation, for
> example. You can either implement your own (whatever it was called that
> Win 3
> did) multitasking-esque environment, or use threads. How about using a
> 32-core machine (or even a 2-core machine) to it's fullest. You can't do
> that
> without threads. Also, writing threadsafe code makes clustering better.
>
> I'm hanging out for 'Fortress' myself. An implicitly multithreaded
> langauge,
> designed for research computation on n-way machines, where n is big. You
> can
> write in mathematical notation. It claims to be trying to be to Fortran
> what
> Java is to C (that is, better in most situations, flames aside :)
>
> > I presume that you are talking about array allocation, or nested
> > structures here. In both cases I mostly agree -- it makes sense for
> > them to be reclaimed at the same time, in general, but I also feel that
> > you really don't need to care in most cases.
> It can't be guaranteed though, so you can't rely on it. For all you (as
> the
> compiler) know, a reference to this may have been passed off somewhere
> else.
> Besides, a typical generational GC will clean them out at the same time if
> they can be anyway.
>
> --
> Robin <robin at kallisti.net.nz> JabberID: <eythian at jabber.kallisti.net.nz>
>
> Hostes alienigeni me abduxerunt. Qui annus est?
>
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