Discussing the criticisms

[Richard]

jacob navia wrote On 11/16/07 11:22,:

jacob navia wrote On 11/15/07 18:30,:

I said that most answers did not even try to have a technical discussion
about the issues addressed in the critique of the wikipedia article but
remained in the level of summary answers without any substantial
argumentation.

Perhaps people are weary of argument.


I am not sneering at the value of the opinion of other people,

... and a few lines later ...


All of them took their usual negative attitude

... and that sort of thing I, for one, find wearisome.

Me too. It would be better that people tried to be positive,
show arguments for their opinions, and at least TRIED to
explain why they arrive at their conclusions.
[...]

Perhaps I didn't express myself clearly. By "that
sort of thing" I did not mean the negative attitudes (a
negative attitude toward gets(), for example, is fully
justified), but your gratuitous use of "their usual
negative attitude," an inflammatory if not downright
insulting remark.

Get off your high horse. Do you read some of the comments? Jacob is
right.

Your usual combative, antagonistic, insensitive,
and egomaniacal, twaddle wearies me. (Note that I
am not sneering, oh, no, not I.)

And you accuse Jacob of being insulting? All he suggested were some
"negative comments". Which are, incidentally, evident in the thread.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Eric Sosman said:

Your usual combative, antagonistic, insensitive,
and egomaniacal, twaddle wearies me. (Note that I
am not sneering, oh, no, not I.)

I'm okay with "combative" (although it would be more pleasant to be fellow
seekers-after-truth). I can handle "antagonistic" (although it would be
more pleasant to have friendly discussions with friendly people), I don't
have a problem with "insensitive" (although it would be more pleasant to
be sensitive to others), and I am no stranger to "egomaniacal" (although
it would be more pleasant to recognise that others, too, have pride in
their knowledge, experience, accomplishments, and skill).

But it's the twaddle, Eric. I just can't hack the twaddle, the utter
drivel, that pours out in a seemingly endless stream. "Wearies" is
precisely the word.

 

[CBFalconer]

jacob navia wrote:
.... snip ...

Me too. It would be better that people tried to be positive,
show arguments for their opinions, and at least TRIED to
explain why they arrive at their conclusions.
[...]

Perhaps I didn't express myself clearly. By "that
sort of thing" I did not mean the negative attitudes (a
negative attitude toward gets(), for example, is fully
justified), but your gratuitous use of "their usual
negative attitude," an inflammatory if not downright
insulting remark.

Your usual combative, antagonistic, insensitive,
and egomaniacal, twaddle wearies me. (Note that I
am not sneering, oh, no, not I.)

Definitely not sneering. That requires the appropriate lip curl,
and I see no sign whatsoever of that.

 

[Default User]

Yes, we did. So why are you creating yet another thread to spout your
preconceptions?

Why do people keep responding to his efforts? He does this to get a
reaction. Reacting feeds the cycle. He posts his crap and gets a 40
message thread out of it. What possible reason would he have for
stopping.

It's obvious that disapproval means nothing to him. The only way to get
Jacob to stop this sort of nonsense is to have his efforts disappear
into the ether with nary an impact on the group. Then it becomes a
waste of his time because he won't get the attention he craves.

Some of us have taken to plonking him. I realize that some don't want
to do that, either so they can correct him when he replies to newbies
or to "encourage" his on-topic efforts. The latter seems to have little
or no beneficial effect. A short, standard message about him posted in
response to off-topic posting (with no follow-up) would be sufficient
in my opinion.




Brian

 

[user923005]

...with a pointer to the actual paperhttp://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2006/EECS-2006-1.pdf

Here is the conclusion of the paper:

"8 Conclusion
Concurrency in software is difficult. However, much of this difficulty
is a consequence of the abstractions for concurrency that we have
chosen to use. The dominant one in use today for generalpurpose
computing is threads. But non-trivial multi-threaded programs are
incomprehensible to humans. It is true that the programming model can
be improved through the use of design patterns, better granularity of
atomicity (e.g. transactions), improved languages, and formal methods.
However, these techniques merely chip away at the unnecessarily
enormous nondeterminism of the threading model. The model remains
intrinsically intractable. If we expect concurrent programming to be
mainstream, and if we demand reliability and predictability from
programs, then we must discard threads as a programming model.
Concurrent programming models can be constructed that are much more
predictable and understandable than threads. They are based on a very
simple principle: deterministic ends should be accomplished with
deterministic means. Nondeterminism should be judiciously and
carefully introduced where needed, and should be explicit in programs.
This principle seems obvious, yet it is not accomplished by threads.
Threads must be relegated to the engine room of computing, to be
suffered only by expert technology providers."

My paraphrasal:
Threads are hard to understand. Only smart people should program with
threads.

My rebuttal:
I write threaded code every day (basically, everything I write runs in
threaded environments), so it can't be that difficult.
Threads consume less resources than processes. Furthermore, the new
wave of horsepower seems to be derived from multiple CPUs and multiple
cores on the CPUs.

My summary:
We had better get used to threads.

 

[jacob navia]

Why do people keep responding to his efforts?

Well, maybe (just maybe) because what I do is not
wrong.

People that do not have any arguments try to intimidate me
(the anonymous attacks against myself and my family posted
in September) or try to ignore me (as the ridiculous attempts
of Heathfield and co) and it doesn't work.

Damm!

"The dogs bark but... the caravan goes on"

 

[rosewater]

Well, maybe (just maybe) because what I do is not
wrong.

Yeah right, you keep telling yourself that.

People that do not have any arguments try to intimidate me
(the anonymous attacks against myself and my family posted
in September) or try to ignore me (as the ridiculous attempts
of Heathfield and co) and it doesn't work.

Well cry me a fricking river! You were the one who brought your family
into it, by announcing to all of Usenet that your daughter downloads
Japanese pornography in breach of copyright laws.

You have started two threads on an ill-informed, badly written and
generally stupid Wikipedia article (you weren't a contributor to it by
any chance?), which has already been discussed to death in the past in
this group. There can be absolutely no reason for this other than to
provoke a further flame war from those in the group who actually know
something about C.

You're like a dog returning to its own vomit - this persecution
complex you've built up for yourself needs to be constantly fueled by
well-deserved abuse you get when you post trash to this group.

If life had an AGC, you'd be the first bit of useless memory swept up
and thrown back onto the heap, just in case something useful could be
put in its place.

Damm!

"The dogs bark but... the caravan goes on"

If I were you, I'd go and see a psychiatrist. Oh, and go learn
something about C while you're at it.

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...

My paraphrasal:
Threads are hard to understand. Only smart people should program
with threads.

My rebuttal:
I write threaded code every day (basically, everything I write
runs in threaded environments), so it can't be that difficult.
Threads consume less resources than processes. Furthermore, the
new wave of horsepower seems to be derived from multiple CPUs and
multiple cores on the CPUs.

Between 30 and 40 years ago Per Brinch Hansen used the monitor
concept to write concurrent systems. They worked, and were simple
to understand.

 

[J. J. Farrell]

The "Threads are Bad" article does not suggest the elimination of
threads. It suggests using threads when threads should be used and
using events when events should be used. I guess that Jacob did not
bother to read it but liked the catchy title.

Indeed. Perhaps I'm not reading very well tonight, but to my eyes
Ousterhout seems to be saying "instead of threads you should use
threads; and what's more you should use threads in exactly the way
you've always used threads". Ousterhout is arguing against a particular
style of programming with threads, certainly not against the use of threads.

It is hard to read his "Should You Abandon Threads? No" as "threads are
a mistake".

 

[Keith Thompson]

Default User wrote: [...]

Why do people keep responding to his efforts?

Well, maybe (just maybe) because what I do is not
wrong.

[...]

jacob, I see that "(e-mail address removed)" has posted a followup.
This person is nothing more than a troll; he certainly does not
represent anyone else on this newsgroup. I encourage you to ignore him.

 

[Kenny McCormack]

Default User wrote: [...]

Why do people keep responding to his efforts?

Well, maybe (just maybe) because what I do is not
wrong.

[...]

jacob, I see that "(e-mail address removed)" has posted a followup.
This person is nothing more than a troll; he certainly does not
represent anyone else on this newsgroup. I encourage you to ignore him.

I think he speaks quite eloquently for most of the regulars here.

 

[Mark McIntyre]

Default User wrote: [...]
Why do people keep responding to his efforts?
Well, maybe (just maybe) because what I do is not
wrong.

[...]

jacob, I see that "(e-mail address removed)" has posted a followup.
This person is nothing more than a troll; he certainly does not
represent anyone else on this newsgroup. I encourage you to ignore him.

I think he speaks quite eloquently for most of the regulars here.

Coming from a famous troll, thats amusing.

(gad I hate changing newsclients,you have to retrain everything...)

 

[Kenny McCormack]

jacob navia wrote:
Default User wrote:
[...]
Why do people keep responding to his efforts?
Well, maybe (just maybe) because what I do is not
wrong.
[...]

jacob, I see that "(e-mail address removed)" has posted a followup.
This person is nothing more than a troll; he certainly does not
represent anyone else on this newsgroup. I encourage you to ignore him.

I think he speaks quite eloquently for most of the regulars here.

Coming from a famous troll, thats amusing.

Amusing? Yes. Entertaining? Of course. True? Definitely!

(gad I hate changing newsclients,you have to retrain everything...)

Channelling Denny Hastert?

 

[J. J. Farrell]

I said that most answers did not even try to have a technical discussion
about the issues addressed in the critique of the wikipedia article but
remained in the level of summary answers without any substantial
argumentation.

I am not sneering at the value of the opinion of other people, I just
say that they could have put more argumented answers. In general, (and
your post is surely not an exception) the technical level of the
discussion here is incredible low.

Either we start discussing some homework and we solve it brilliantly for
the lazy students that post their homework here, or we start endless
polemic about non-issues. When there is a long critic of the language
published in the wikipedia, the regulars start the usual "who cares"
"use another language" "go away", etc.

I can never work out whether you are a fantasist or simply a liar. Your
claims about what was said in that thread are untrue.

 

[Ian Collins]

Codswallop.

You have a better way for a single application to keep all of your cores
busy?

 

[Richard Harter]

You have a better way for a single application to keep all of your cores
busy?

Well, you can always sign up with the Seti project or one of
those prime buster projects.



Richard Harter, (e-mail address removed)
http://home.tiac.net/~cri, http://www.varinoma.com
In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die

 

[jacob navia]

You have a better way for a single application to keep all of your cores
busy?

Yes.

Parallel data structures, specially tables.

Tables are inherently parallel. They can be treated in parallel without
any need for synchronization if each parallel processing "thread"
works with a specific part of the table.

And I put "thread" in quotes because there is no modification of the
global variables and all the associated problems.

 

[Ian Collins]

Ian Collins wrote:

Yes.

Parallel data structures, specially tables.

Tables are inherently parallel. They can be treated in parallel without
any need for synchronization if each parallel processing "thread"
works with a specific part of the table.

References?

I'd be interested in seeing an implementation for a mainstream platform
that doesn't use threads under the hood.

 

[jacob navia]

References?

I'd be interested in seeing an implementation for a mainstream platform
that doesn't use threads under the hood.

Of course under the hood will be parallel cpus doing paralell execution!
What I want to do is described at best in
SIMD Programming Manual for linux and windows
by Paul Cockshott and Keneth Renfrew
Springer editor. ISBN 185233794X
Year: 2004.

This is a parallel tables implementation of pascal. It
implements most ideas of APL (A Programming Language) from Iverson.

 

[Ian Collins]

Of course under the hood will be parallel cpus doing paralell execution!

So threads aren't bad after all.