🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1991Feb6.122949.8210@rodan.acs.syr.edu> greeny@wotan.top.cis.syr.edu (Jonathan Greenfield) writes:

>CSP is a fine theoretical entity, but it surely is not a programming language,
>since CSP (as defined in Hoare's book) "programs" are not capable of actually 
>doing anything.  (Hoare's definition of parallel composition is inadequate.)

Please explain.  Why is it inadequate?

>Occam is the rather ugly result of one attempt at including the elegant
>concepts of CSP in a practical and efficient programming language.

Ugly?  That's a matter of opinion...

>(Note that, ignoring the procedural/functional differences, the main 
>conceptual difference between CSP and occam involves the action of parallel 
>composition.)

Again, please explain.  I always thought they were the same.

>At a purely practical level, the 'copy-penalty' is probably not a real issue
>since any program that aspires to efficieny (when compared to sequential
>programs) must be coarse-grained enough so as to make the communication
>time negligible when compared to the computation time.  When this is the case
>the 'copy-penalty' will obviously be negligible also.

Agreed.

>Jonathan

Ian
--
I.Glendinning@ecs.soton.ac.uk        Ian Glendinning
Tel: +44 703 593081                  Electronics and Computer Science
Fax: +44 703 593045                  University of Southampton SO9 5NH England