Need for threads

Ruby
1

a discussion of tcl threads came up in that newsgroup.

one of the posts stopped me cold. the msg boiled down to:

on a single non-ht cpu if your program can’t do soemthnig while
waiting on a resource there’s no real need for threaded code.

threading will actually slow down your program overall.

http://home.cogeco.ca/~tsummerfelt1
telnet://ventedspleen.dyndns.org

2

Uh, yeah, that’s pretty much why not all code is threaded.

On the other hand, in programs above a certain size, or ones that have
graphical user interface, there usually is something else that you can
do while you’re waiting on that resource.

3

On 2/21/06, tony summerfelt [email protected] wrote:

telnet://ventedspleen.dyndns.org

This is accurate, of course threads may simplify your design, which
is a virtue as well.

pth

4

DÅ?a Utorok 21 Február 2006 19:10 Daniel N. napísal:

Uh, yeah, that’s pretty much why not all code is threaded.

On the other hand, in programs above a certain size, or ones that have
graphical user interface, there usually is something else that you can
do while you’re waiting on that resource.

This is pretty much one of the few good reasons to use threads on a
single-core processor - to keep an interactive user interface
responsive. And
to give people that can’t wrap their heads around parallel processing
headaches making them code Dining Philosophers mutter

They also make life simpler in some scenarios - it’s definately easier
to make
a multithreaded application with parallel asynchronous input (think
packet
sniffing on multiple network interfaces) by hogging each with a thread
you
couldn’t care less about if it blocks, than using standard asynchronous
IO,
which isn’t even available for all input sources.

David V.

5

On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 03:09:22 +0900, you wrote:

This is accurate, of course threads may simplify your design, which
is a virtue as well.

that’s what i find. threading helps keep track of things that should
be happening at the same time. and who knows, maybe i’ll have a
multi-cpu in the future :slight_smile:
http://home.cogeco.ca/~tsummerfelt1
telnet://ventedspleen.dyndns.org

6

Daniel N. [email protected] wrote:

Uh, yeah, that’s pretty much why not all code is threaded.

On the other hand, in programs above a certain size, or ones that have
graphical user interface, there usually is something else that you can
do while you’re waiting on that resource.

Like reading from or writing to another resource. Exactly. Ruby’s
multithreading is only at a loss on a multi CPU machine with heavy
computation because it doesn’t use more than one CPU.

Kind regards

robert