Re: [boost] Re: Threads

From: Greg Colvin (greg_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-08-23 12:22:07

There are many good points here, so I'll just respond to two
that seemed a little off ...

From: Jens Maurer <Jens.Maurer_at_[hidden]>
> ...
> I think that striving for compile-time support for error detection
> is a good idea in general (that's why we're using a statically-typed
> language), but not very applicable to the problems with threading,
> which are run-time dynamic in their most intrinsic nature.

If your problems with threads are "run-time dynamic" then
you are in hopeless trouble.  Code is always dynamic.  To
write correct code you have to be able to reason about
program state *statically*.

> We should, of course, help the programmer, but I think we help him
> most by describing safe design patterns, not crippling natural
> (common) expressiveness and providing adequate library support for
> that.
> 
> In particular:
>  - Don't force the use of lambda expressions if the alternative
> is a simple while(...) loop pattern to be explained

My understanding is that whether you need while..wait or
just if..wait depends on the scheduling promises made by the
underlying mutex and condition variable facilities.  Lambda
expressions let us hide such details.

> ...