Why Threads Are a Bad Idea (1995) [pdf]
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Why Threads Are a Bad Idea (1995) [pdf]
1–10 of 103 posts
Re: Why Threads Are a Bad Idea (1995) [pdf]
#2> Only use threads where true CPU concurrency is needed.
This is the case much more often now than it was in 1995.
Re: Why Threads Are a Bad Idea (1995) [pdf]
#3The source of the article, Sun, is interesting.
I guess the author knew what was about to be foisted upon the world.
Kudos for trying to warn us.
(I remember reading Novell and OS/2 documentation in the late 80s / early 90s about threads and recoiling in horror. Of course, all real men must use threads, cuz they’re faster, even if stupefyingly dangerous)
Re: Why Threads Are a Bad Idea (1995) [pdf]
#4The source of the article, Sun, is interesting. I guess the author knew what was about to be foisted upon the world. Kudos for trying to warn us. (I remember reading Novell and OS/2 documentation in the late 80s / early 90s about threads and recoiling in horror. Of course, all real men must use threads, cuz they’re faster, even if stupefyingly dangerous)
John Ousterhout is the inventor of the Tcl language.
Re: Why Threads Are a Bad Idea (1995) [pdf]
#5[deleted]
Re: Why Threads Are a Bad Idea (1995) [pdf]
#6> Only use threads where true CPU concurrency is needed. This is the case much more often now than it was in 1995.
Somebody better tell the Node.js cluster guys :-)
They manage without threads pretty well, I think. Shared state is deliberate, outside of individual processes, rather than accidental in-process. As it should be unless you are doing some serious systems level programming.
Re: Why Threads Are a Bad Idea (1995) [pdf]
#7The source of the article, Sun, is interesting. I guess the author knew what was about to be foisted upon the world. Kudos for trying to warn us. (I remember reading Novell and OS/2 documentation in the late 80s / early 90s about threads and recoiling in horror. Of course, all real men must use threads, cuz they’re faster, even if stupefyingly dangerous)
The author is John Osterhout, a CS professor. He was working at Sunlabs at the time. It's not like some unknown lone voice from the bowels of Sun was 'trying to warn us'. Warn us about what, anyway?
Re: Why Threads Are a Bad Idea (1995) [pdf]
#8Just FMI: the "events" approach that's recommended in the article over threads, that's how Python libraries like tornado and twisted work, right? And to what extent does the new asyncio Python library assume that functionality?
Re: Why Threads Are a Bad Idea (1995) [pdf]
#9The source of the article, Sun, is interesting. I guess the author knew what was about to be foisted upon the world. Kudos for trying to warn us. (I remember reading Novell and OS/2 documentation in the late 80s / early 90s about threads and recoiling in horror. Of course, all real men must use threads, cuz they’re faster, even if stupefyingly dangerous)
John Ousterhout is the inventor of the Tcl language.
And co-author of the Raft consensus algorithm! [1]
Re: Why Threads Are a Bad Idea (1995) [pdf]
#10> Only use threads where true CPU concurrency is needed. This is the case much more often now than it was in 1995.
Somebody better tell the Node.js cluster guys :-) They manage without threads pretty well, I think. Shared state is deliberate, outside of individual processes, rather than accidental in-process. As it should be unless you are doing some serious systems level programming.
To be fair, node.js just merged the --experimental-workers module for actual webworker-style threading.