On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 9:13 AM, Christian Heimes <lists at cheimes.de> wrote: > Steve Holden schrieb: >> If I remember correctly (when threading was invented in the mid-1980s) >> threads were originally described as "lightweight processes". The >> perceived advantage at the time was the ability to have multiple threads >> of control with shared memory: this was much faster than the available >> inter-process communication mechanisms. On a single-processor computer >> synchronization was much less of a problem. > > Initially one of Java's main target platforms were set-top boxes. Back > in the 90ties set-top boxes had limited hardware and dumb processors. > Most of the boxes had no MMU and so didn't support multiple processes. > Threads were the easiest way to have some kind of concurrency. Just let's not rewrite history and believe Java invented threads. They were around well before that. > Back in those days threads were the only solution for concurrency but > today - about 15 years later with powerful processors even in cheap > mobile phones - people are still indoctrinated with the same philosophy ... It's not so much indoctrination. Threads are a useful tool. The problem is that some people perceive threads as the *only* tool. There's a whole spectrum of tools, from event handling to multiple processes, and they don't all solve the same problem. (I guess it doesn't help that the word process is given new meanings by some languages.) -- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
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