🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1992Aug14.155639.1045@EE.Surrey.Ac.UK> R.Peel@ee.surrey.ac.uk (Roger Peel) writes:

>So why is occam not liked by so many programmers?  Well, some write
>sequential code for which occam only provides a few extra benefits.  Fine
>- they can justifiably continue to use a sequential language provided they
>only attempt to run their code on a single transputer.  Parallel
>enhancements to a sequential language might be acceptable for particularly
>large-grained parallel tasks, too, but this is not where occam stands out,
>either.

I tend to agree insofar as Roger is referring to sequential languages with
library support for parallel processing added.  Such function calls don't
provide the necessary level of abstraction for fine-grain parallelism,
and often cause an unacceptable overhead.

Now, without wishing to get dragged into yet another religious discussion
about programming languages or editors, I feel that I must point out
that the PACT Parallel C compiler has language extensions very similar
to those found in Occam (par, alt, channel) folded into ANSI Standard C
in a natural manner.  This allows fine-grain parallelism to be expressed
just as easily as in Occam.

I agree with Roger that many communicating lightweight threads, buffers,
multiplexers etc., combined with a clean and powerful syntax to describe
them makes for a very nice programming model indeed.  This model is now
accessible to both Occam and C programmers alike.

Best,

Rob

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     PACT                   Rob Kurver
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