from Joseph McDonald on 2001-07-25 at 11:16:07:
> 
> AG> Let me just say that this is the single biggest problem that I see
> AG> with Ruby.  To my mind, native threading support is a must for a
> AG> language to be widely accepted.  Ruby's internal threading support has
> AG> already demonstrated how elgantly Ruby can support common threading
> AG> patterns - I'd love to see the ability to transparently drop in either
> AG> Ruby-thread or native thread backends into a Ruby program, without
> AG> changing anything but the threading class used.
> 
> I'd also vote to put this near the top of the priority list.
> 
> thanks,
> -joe

I'm just going to throw my $0.02 in here and point out that while Ruby's current
threading support could use some help from native threads, it would be a shame
to have to sacrifice one for the other. System threads are fantastic under
certain circumstances, but intuitive context switching can be very useful as
well.

Systhreads enable better performance when dealing with blocking IO and multi
processor machines, but carry a fair bit of overhead. (see Stackless Python's
microthreads vs. the native threading model).

So if systhreads are to be added to ruby, I would suggest that they not replace
the current Thread module, but rather add a Systhread module (or NativeThread
or something).

-- 
Eli Green
Connection closed by foreign host.