Does the

• complete absence of a threads.pdd from the specification;
• that the term "threads" appears only 35 times in the entire documentation set;
• that the "failed" ithreads model so widely denigrated and despisedis being nearly exactly replicated for the underpinnings of the new language;

inspire you with confidence?

the above statements are incorrect. parrot has a threads design document. see http://www.parrotcode.org/docs/pdd/ for the list of design docs, and note threads (pdd25) is there, and is clearly labeled as a draft. it is not completely absent.

parrot's threading spec has not yet been redesigned, since originally conceived. as it was conceived some time ago, it's bound to look out-of-date, especially as when it was conceived, perl6 looked a lot more like perl5, so it's natural that the model looked a lot like ithreads.

parrot work is in progress--currently the exception model is on the top of the design list, followed by threads and i/o (however, i'm not sure of the specific order of those two.) allison's last commit (two weeks ago) to the threads doc has a log that reads, "Partial update of Threads PDD with collected wisdom from prior discussion."

as an aside, for those of you who have not seen me around here lately, i've been devoting my free time to work on parrot rather than to hang out here. i'm responsible for the parrot test suite, and am having a blast and learning a great deal by working with patrick michaud on the perl6 compiler as well. i wish you'd all join the parrot-porters@perl.org mailing list and contribute to any discussion where you feel it appropriate. parrot has made major progress in some respects (it has fully specified and implemented namespace and lexical implementations to name two,) but it's success depends almost solely on the contributions of volunteers. if you feel you have something to add to the components of parrot which are still in draft status (like threads,) please don't hold back.