🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4iugmv$i9d@news1.delphi.com>,
John Strohm <john.r.strohm@BIX.com> wrote:
>Bengt Kleberg wrote:
>>
>>Last time I looked Oberon did not have preemptive multitasking.
>>Has that been added?
>
>Not that I know of.
>
>Observe that the Oberon System works just fine WITHOUT preemptive
>multitasking.  Observe that Microsquishy Windoze works just fine WITHOUT
>preemptive multitasking.  Observe that the early Macintosh operating system
>worked just fine WITHOUT preemptive multitasking.  Observe that there are a
>rather large number of embedded systems that work just fine WITHOUT
>preemptive multitasking. 

That sort of depends on what your expectations are, doesn't it?

>So why do you require preemptive multitasking?

How about for doing long-running calculations in the background
(without having to decompose them into smaller problems and save
their state)?

How about for responding to high-priority system events that *must*
be addressed immediately (without having to rewrite drivers to
respond to particular interupts)?

That said, I think Wirth & Gutknecht have shown how effective
cooperative multitasking can be and that it is sufficient for a
great many applications.
-- 
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