Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder3.hal-mli.net!nx02.iad01.newshosting.com!novia!nx01.iad01.newshosting.com!newshosting.com!69.16.185.21.MISMATCH!npeer03.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!post01.iad.highwinds-media.com!newsfe03.iad.POSTED!00000000!not-for-mail Followup-To: comp.std.c Newsgroups: comp.std.c,comp.programming.threads,comp.unix.programmer Subject: some sane words, for sure User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.3 (berkeley-unix) References: <4e53ba11-fea9-4896-8bb9-6b45acb6e18f@y24g2000yqb.googlegroups.com> From: "Greg A. Woods" X-Face: .}E4CW({2'v<\JefgY&(9#RJD?~_7.KTC$+RklqwlB/<)^)~X0i*J?m)SXpHA8'9FHn5Fz*eVTH5=_C>]XK#"dLOyD`#tbEh1_8v-hwwR{.X)+b-!\4mM] 1HqG#"@VSI$1MNvRk\4>qsCclW|Ns4V/2poz=gS-+~m8\%5eVq]a\3.>T>U/f8A Message-ID: <87vcvdeetf.fsf_-_@once.weird.com> Cancel-Lock: sha1:+wxZBasB2pVTVzTwLmOH6+SRO9Y= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Lines: 54 NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.67.98.78 X-Complaints-To: internet.abuse@sjrb.ca X-Trace: newsfe03.iad 1310088840 24.67.98.78 (Fri, 08 Jul 2011 01:34:00 UTC) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 08 Jul 2011 01:34:00 UTC Date: Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:33:48 -0700 Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.std.c:634 comp.programming.threads:394 comp.unix.programmer:904 I'm pretty new to this thread, and I haven't followed what's been written very closely even since I've noticed it, but this message contains some very sane words and words of truth. I agree wholeheartedly with the part I quote below. If anyone reading this does have contact with any committee members, I really hope these issues can be raised with the committee. jacob navia writes: > > If simply supporting pthreads is not so simple as I described (and > I fear you are right) why don't we leave that part out? > > Why this rush to standardize another, competing standard in a highly > complex subject matter where most committee members aren't experts? > > Can't we postpone this whole subject for a later edition? Why must > the committee do something in this direction? > > Looking at the situation now and the errors that are discovered when we > look deeper into this, makes obvious that this whole business is a > VBI: a Very Bad Idea (tm). > > Without trying to denigrate anyone it is obvious that most committee > members aren't experts in this thread stuff, as many people, there is > *nothing wrong* with that. They CAN'T KNOW EVERYTHING. > > Both windows threads and POSIX pthreads are the work of specialists > of the field, and they are standards pushed by a company that has > enormous resources or by a community of users with thousands of > developers that have tested and explored the pthread design since YEARS > and YEARS. > > To believe that the C standards committee with so few resources at > hand and with no significant user base at the start will succeed > is beyond what I can sanely conceive. This will take a lot of > time and an enormous effort from the committee members for dubious > results AT BEST. [[....]] > Designing multi-threaded programs is notoriously difficult and > people will be VERY reluctant to change the base support they > are working with since years. Specially if it is fundamentally > flawed. If you do not give the implementors the possibilty of > using ALL (or the most crucial) features of the underlying > OS this C API will never take off. -- Greg A. Woods RoboHack living on the edge http://www.robohack.ca/