🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <nevin-0302960411460001@150.135.1.79>,
Nevin ":-]" Liber <nevin@CS.Arizona.EDU> wrote:
>In article <19960201.11A2980.E21F@olympus.net>, dons@olympus.net (Don
>Schmelling) wrote:
>
>> And once again, I must ask the question, but how are you runing more than
>> one program at once in a cooperative multitasking system, while a program
>> like that one is being run.
>
>If I ever have an occasion to run a brain-dead program like void
>main(void) { for (;;); }, I'll let you know.  It isn't a very interesting
>question to me, since it just doesn't come up in Real Life.  If you wish
>to pay me to test brain dead programs on a Mac, I'd be more than happy to
>oblige.

Fine.  Then try running a "brain-dead" program like this instead:

	main()
	{
	    while ( there_is_useful_work_to_be_done )
	    {
		do_the_computationally_intensive_useful_work();
	    }
	    display_the_results();
	}

where there_is_useful_work_to_be_done remains true for long periods of
time (minutes, hours, perhaps even days).

Such a program could be an image renderer (e.g., the type used to
produce "Toy Story") or a finite element analysis program, or any
number of useful things.

>> The program never tells the os it is done
>> with the cpu and just uses up all of the cpu.
>
>Which is, of course, not true.  Interrupts still occur.

And, of course, this is irrelevant.  Just what does the Mac *do* with
such interrupts when they occur, when a program such as the one above
is running?  For instance, what happens if the user clicks the mouse
on another window while the above program is running?  Answer:
nothing.

In short, it doesn't make much difference that interrupts still occur
(with a couple of exceptions: you can stop the execution of the above
program, and your print job might actually run, and your download
might actually still work, though I have doubts about all but the
first).

>> If you are only running one
>> task that gets all of the cpu then you are not multitasking.
>
>And I have yet to find a reason to run programs this badly written.  Is
>this really what you use your Amiga for??

Okay, so tell me just how the above program is "badly written", hmmm??

Unless, of course, you define "badly written" to mean "written in such
a way that the Macintosh can't run it while allowing other programs to
respond to the user, even though other systems have no problem with
it", in which case never mind...we don't *need* definitions like that.


And yes, people *do* use Amigas for that kind of thing (though I'd
prefer a more stable system, like my Linux system, for something like
that).

-- 
Kevin Brown                                     kevin@frobozz.sccsi.com
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