Re: AMIGA will use Linux, but Linux has several "multimedia-deficiencies"

Mike Harrelson (mikeh@mindspring.com)
Mon, 12 Jul 1999 12:36:00 -0400 (EDT)


On Sun, 11 Jul 1999, Marty Leisner wrote:

> > Simply put, Unix programs rarly are written with threads. They should be.
> >
> > --
>
>
> I'm thankful they're not. It is very difficult to debug threaded programs.
>
> Threads are not a panacea. It is often a kitchen-sink mentality for
> programming
> (we have a feature, let's use it). Most threaded programs can effectively
> be non-threaded if you think hard about the problem.

Why bother? If threads work best for an application why rewrite it to not use
them?

> And then they become much simpler to debug and understand.

Easier to understand? That's debatable, unless you are not familiar with
thread programming.

> Most programs in the real world are quite poor...threads just make
> it harder to debug...

They may be harder to debug, but that doesn't mean we should just throw them
out. Threads can and do make many applications much easier to design and
implement without having to go to a slower process/fork() model or a more
complicated model using nonblocking I/O with select()/poll().

-- mikeh

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