Re: Multiple Threads: Costs, Benefits

[Marcus Daniels <marcus@sysc.pdx.edu>]

>>>>> "Don" == Don Cohen <donc@ISI.EDU> writes:

Don> It looks like you're now agreeing that it makes sense to use
Don> threads (processes sharing memory), but that whatever you need to
Don> do with them can be done in C.  I guess you could do everything
Don> in C. 

Whatever I would need threads for would be performance
(e.g. preprocessing data); otherwise I'd use IPC.  If I needed
threads, I would write a small amount of support code in C.  Since
I've never had a need that made using C burdensome, I don't care. Is
that sufficiently qualified? 

me> I'm not primarily concerned about the execution cost...
me> The cost I speak of is the development and maintenance cost.  

The cost could be amortized by the utility.  The question is whether
or not the utility is so much higher than more economical
alternatives.  I'm remain skeptical.

me> I suppose one could initially ignore the problem of
me> dynamic variables and only worry about declared globals. 

I don't have any technical arguments I care about.  I just don't want
to divert my time away from things that I *do* care about.

Of course, if someone made the winning effort to implement this
I would help to integrate it.  It is just that, personally, I'm 
indifferent about it.