Lots of concurrency

Andrew C. Greenberg werdna at mucow.com
Thu Jan 1 08:09:24 UTC 1970


I fear this debate seems to be taking an odd twist into irrelevancy.  
While it may be true (indeed unsurprising) that human cognition can be 
modelled most appropriately using concurrency; indeed of a promiscuous 
nature, I do not see how this indicates or counterindicates that a 
concurrent model is the best model for human cognition to specify the 
execution of system.

However self-aware we may be, such awareness of the means how we think 
does not make us think best using that means.  As others have noted, 
concurrency is hard.  it is hard, not only because languages do not 
facilitate concurrent programming (though many do), but because 
concurrency (or its abstraction, indeterminacy) is hard.  It is trivial 
to write a plausible concurrent program that is broken, and very, very 
hard to find and diagnose the bases and source of a bug.

This is not to say that promiscuous determinacy doesn't also add 
complexity -- it most certainly does.  An example as trivial as the swap 
operation of two values x and y, which is invariably modelled using a 
temporary variable

		t := x; x := y; y := t

introduces complexity unrelated to the problem.  Indeed, Edsger Dijkstra 
emphasized the problem of overdetermining code, favoring therefor the 
language construct of the concurrent assignment, so swap can be 
indicated thus:

		x,y := y,x

leaving the more detailed sequencing to the "system" to sort out.  The 
problem here is that such nondetermincy is well-constrained and easily 
implemented in worst case.  The sequencing and protection of shared 
resources in concurrent programs is far more subtle and problematic.

My point is that while it is apparent that overdetermining code 
sequentially often introduces levels of detail that precludes more 
elegant expression of correct code, and sometimes distracts from best 
ways to articulate the code, so, too, does expression of concurrency 
introduce subtle unstated bugs and requires stating degrees of 
sequencing, which are often harder to express than merely specifying the 
sequencing in all its gory detail.





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