A critic of Guido's blog on Python's lambda

[Frank Goenninger DG1SBG]

Ken Tilton <kentilton at gmail.com> writes:

> sross wrote:
>>>I do wonder what would happen to Cells if I ever want to support
>>>multiple threads. Or in a parallel processing environment.
>> AFAIK It should be fine.
>> In LW, SBCL and ACL all bindings of dynamic variables are thread-local.
>> 
>
> Ah, I was guilty of making an unspoken segue: the problem is not with
> the *dependent* special variable, but with the sequentially growing
> numeric *datapulse-id* ("the ID") that tells a cell if it needs to
> recompute its value. The ID is not dynamically bound. If threads T1
> and T2 each execute a toplevel, imperative assignment, two threads
> will start propagating change up the same dependency
> graph... <shudder>
>
> Might need to specify a "main" thread that gets to play with Cells and
> restrict other threads to intense computations but no Cells?

Hmmm. I am wondering if a Cells Manager class could be the home for
all Cells. Each thread could the have its own Cells Manager...

>
> Actually, I got along quite a while without an ID, I just propagated
> to dependents and ran rules. This led sometimes to a rule running
> twice for one change and transiently taking on a garbage value, when
> the dependency graph of a Cell had two paths back to some changed
> Cell.
>
> Well, Cells have always been reengineered in the face of actual use
> cases, because I am not really smart enough to work these things out
> in the abstract. Or too lazy or something. Probably all three.

Nah. It's me asking again and again those silly questions about 
real Cells usage in some real life apps ;-)

Frank