Re: [boost] Future of threads (III)

From: Douglas Gregor (gregod_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-02-12 23:36:59

On Thursday 12 February 2004 08:15 pm, scott wrote:
> but that is somewhat convenient. i dont have any real case
> for not building on top of boost::threads. i would wonder
> about losing touch with the available threading primitives.
> its hard enough making it work without having to work through
> an intermediary. but hiding the specifics of threads is
> a major benefit of boost::threads so i will (head down)
> look into this.
>
> the result wouldnt be an "alternate" model though :-)

>From the programmer's perspective, it is an alternative model: you don't need 
to show them the threads underneath, you just need to show them the 
high-level interface. 

Here's the rub: I'm interested. The problem is that I don't want this library 
lost because it needs to be implemented for Posix, and Windows, and Mac, and 
we tend to be rather skeptical about platform-specific libraries :) 

> > This reminds me of the actor model of distributed
> > computation. If you are
> > familiar with actors, could you briefly compare/contrast your
> > approach
> > against them?
>
> i know of uml's actor but not sure if that's the same thing.
> and my knowledge of uml is so lame i suspect i shouldnt attempt
> any analogies.

I was not referring to UML actors, but to a model for (distributed) 
computation.

> was there some specific aspect of alt-threads that needed
> elaboration (yeah, like everything :-) or were you suggesting
> a new direction for me to check out?

Well, you might be interested in this:

  http://www.cs.rpi.edu/courses/spring03/dci/actor-semantics.pdf

It describes the actor model of computation, which I think you might be 
interested in.

        Doug