Re: [boost] Boost.Threads Locking Delima

From: William E. Kempf (williamkempf_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-05-17 12:22:52

----- Original Message -----
From: "Pete Becker" <petebecker_at_[hidden]>

> At 11:25 AM 5/17/2002 -0500, William E. Kempf wrote:
>
> >The problem is, as with auto_ptr, newbies
> >don't understand the rules of move semantics so *they* are surprised.
So,
> >yes, I agree this is a major drawback to this solution
>
> It's only a major drawback if it's important to make mult-threaded
> programming easy for newbies. Given the current state of technology that's
> an impossible task, and any threading package that suggests that it does
> this (in particular, java.lang.Thread) does them a disservice.
>
> Writing robust, fast multi-threaded applications requires expert design
and
> expert implementation oversight. The target audience for a threading
> library should be experts, not newbies.

A few thoughts on this:

1)  In order to become an expert you have to start as a newbie.
2)  In the real world applications are written daily by non-experts that run
in critical systems and use MT techniques.
3)  The goal isn't to make a library that totally insulates newbies from
learning to be experts, but to illustrate (for learning purposes) and
prevent the most common mistakes made (which aren't always made by newbies
alone when it comes to MT programming).

In any event, I can't tell from this post whether or not you favor move
semantics here.  That's probably not the point of your post, but I'd still
like to hear it.

Bill Kempf