Some PhDs (and me, too), think that threads are evil.

PhDs don't like anything that they cannot put into nice theoretical boxes. The non-determanism of thread interactions (in fact, non-determanism in general), does not fit into any of their nice boxes--so it scares them.

Newsflash. The world is non-determanistic(*). Get over it!

((*)And no, I do not want the theological debate :)

Any non-self-contained program--ie. any program that uses data from outside of itself, via the keyboard or a file or a database--is non-determanistic. The world goes on. New, non-determanistic programs are written and used every day.

The same goes for threads. The PhDs can run around like headless chicken writing all the theses they like about how threads can't work, aren't safe, cannot be proven, or ascribing them with metaphysical properties.

The simple fact is that thousands of programmers are writing thousand of programs that use some flavour of threading every day. Half of the web is run, directed or controlled by threaded applications.

The debate is not whether threads are useful, or will be used. It is simply about how they will be used. What abstractions will make their use more accessible. And, crucially in this forum, from what languages they will be used.

...non-trivial multi-threaded programs are incomprehensible to humans.

Viewed as complete systems, most non-trivial programs are incomprehensible to humans. That's why we use abstrations.

You know, for years the theoreticians went around claiming that the bumblebee couldn't possibly fly. And yet ...

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
"Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."

In reply to Re^2: Where is concurrency going? Is Perl going there? by BrowserUk
in thread Where is concurrency going? Is Perl going there? by erroneousBollock

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