Ruby Impressions

[Brian Quinlan]

Phil Tomson wrote:
> As for the 'microthreading' model...  Yes, Ruby threads are not
native.
> For my purposes it's more important that threads work cross-platform
(my
> particular applications don't need high performance, multi-processor
> threading, but YMMV).  There is talk of creating an extension for
native
> threads so that - some want them to totally replace the current
threads
> in Ruby, IMHO we should have both the current platform neutral
threading
> model and a native threading extension.

I don't think that having "platform neutral" threading is really that
important. There are a small number of platform threading modules out
there i.e. POSIX, c-threads, Windows threads probably covers 99.9% of
the machines in the world. And writing a thread module is <100LOC in
Python.

> > And the trade-off is that it requires a long jump hack.
> >
> 
> Not sure about that, but if it's true, what's the problem?  It works.

It works with VC and gcc. Whether it works on all platforms and
compilers is another story... has anyone ported Ruby to a really exotic
platform yet (e.g. Cray)
 
> I'm a former Perl guy and I don't even use the predefined variables
all
> that much (and there is the english.rb module that gives them
reasonable
> names - I recommend that people use it.)

I don't care that I don't have to use those constructs. I care that
other people CAN use them and I may be forced to read them one day.

Cheers,
Brian