Zed Shaw wrote:
> On Jan 23, 2006, at 9:27 PM, Toby DiPasquale wrote:

> > I am interested b/c I am currently trying to write a microthreading
> > library for Ruby based on some of the more performing event
> > multiplexing...
>
> You know, having tried this, I have to say you'll be fighting a
> losing battle.  Ruby's thread implementation just isn't able to work
> with external multiplexing methods.  I couldn't figure it out, so if
> you do then let me know.
>

I've been meaning to ask about this as well ever since I saw you killed
Ruby/Event.   In your experience is it only a Bad Idea(tm) to use
poll/libevent in your Ruby app if you'll also be using Threads, or is
it always a bad idea, even if you can guarentee that "require 'thread'"
is never issued?

Also, did you ever get a chance to write a port mortem discussing your
findings and the problems you ran into?

This seems like a fairly major serious problem with Ruby that should
be addressed.  Event driven programming really enables the whole
"pieces loosely joined" paradigm.  I mean its kind of embarrasing that
the best way to do async programming with Ruby is to use Rails'
javascript libraries. (okay, I'm enough of a web geek to think that
that is actually kind of cool, but we'll ignore that)

Thanks,
kellan