Concurrency architecture for D2

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

retard wrote:
> Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:50:26 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:
> 
>> Michel Fortin wrote:
>>> Also keep in mind that we don't really need a shared vision among
>>> everyone. What's needed is someone who takes the decisions. Discussion
>>> is only needed to help that person take the right decisions. Although
>>> consensus among all members certainly boosts the decider
>>> self-confidence, it is not required, and not necessarily desirable
>>> either. A consensus among only a few key people is all that is needed,
>>> and this has little to do with who is allowed to raise issues and
>>> propose solutions.
>> The real problem with a concurrency model is that very few programmers
>> understand the issues. The failed Java concurrency model is an example
>> of this shortage. For another, about 5 years ago I attended a panel of
>> 30 of the top C++ experts in the world to discuss a concurrency model
>> for C++0x.
>>
>> It didn't take long for it to become obvious that exactly two people
>> understood the issues - Hans Boehm and Herb Sutter. The rest of us sat
>> there slack-jawed and drooling, asking endless inane questions. I wish I
>> had the patience Hans and Herb showed in dealing with this.
>>
>> Since then I have tried to master this topic, but I don't have much
>> experience writing complex multithreaded code. So what we need are
>> people who are experienced with MT code who can evaluate the design to
>> see if we missed the boat or not. I'd rather not shoot at the moon yet
>> wind up orbiting some asteroid.
> 
> If only 2 of the top 30 c++ experts understand concurrency models, what 
> makes you think that D programming community, mostly consisting of novice/
> hobbyist/student programmers have any better luck? There are only a 
> handful of such experts as Sean, Andrei, Bartosz, Brad et al here. The D 
> community is maybe 3 to 4 orders of magnitude smaller than the global C++ 
> community. Only a handful of enterprises use D and there is basically no 
> academic research happening around D.

Our flagship for communicating across concurrent entities is message 
passing, which is much more palatable than classic share-the-world 
concurrency models.

I'm very excited about how this is coming together.


Andrei