🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <9601272105.AA17852@dxmint.cern.ch>, Dan Pop
<danpop@mail.cern.ch> wrote:

> >There are two flavors: cooperative and preemptive. Both are multitasking.

> Who invented cooperative "multitasking"?

The concurrent programming people (at least that is where I first read
about it, and none of those books/articles even remotely referred to a
Macintosh).  Just because the Unix crowd thinks that "real" is a synonym
for "preemptive" doesn't make it true.

> Is it?  Pray tell, how is MacOS multitasking the following "application":

> main() { for(;;); }

Well, I don't particularly consider this a useful application.  Is this
what PMT people do with their machines all day?

> Yes, my example serves no useful purpose, but every experienced Mac user 
> has seen real applications freezing the Mac.

Of course, since interrupts are still working, every experienced Mac user
(and even the unexperienced ones too) can kill it off just like you would
on a PMT machine.  Sorry, but the freezes aren't caused by infinite
loops.  Sure, it's theoretically possible for an infinite loop to take
control of your machine, but in practice, it just doesn't happen.
-- 
        Nevin ":-)" Liber       nevin@CS.Arizona.EDU    (520) 293-2799