I suppose that depends on how many more years you're willing not to contribute somehow to getting a good multi-threading model in Perl.
The first step in achieving a good threading model is understanding the limitations of the existing one.
And the first few steps in doing that is realising that:
- the pthreads api has its own set of limitations and is far too low-level to use as the basis for threading in a HLL.
- fork is a piss poor model for threading.
- Copy On Write (COW) has little or no benefit when the C-level data structures representing Perl-level read-only variables are themselves routinely, internally mutated.
- for threading to be fully effective in a high level language, you need both kernel-space (pre-emptive) threading and user-space (cooperative) threading.
- Software Transaction Memory (STM) only works for undoable (re-startable) operations.
If STM is the only state-sharing mechanism, then a very high proportion of the situations and algorithms that most benefit from threading can no longer be coded!
STM promises an efficient solution to shared-state memory operations which can benefit some classes of algorithm (the kinds of things PDL does for instance), but it holds little promise for a huge range of other threading scenarios.
Did you ever visit one of those Echo Canyons, yell, and wonder if anyone is listening?
Did you ever stick your head into a lion's cage to try and pursuade it to become a vegetarian?
Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
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