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From: ted@grebyn.com (Ted Holden)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Why tasking in a language is such a bad idea
Message-ID: <20097@grebyn.com>
Date: 2 Jun 90 18:24:49 GMT
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing, Vienna, VA
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


 
 
Sorry to be a while getting back.  Several people posted articles
indicating they had no idea WHY tasking as a language feature is a bad
idea.  There are several reasons, all of them good.  For one thing, it's
a lot of dead weight to be carrying around for an application which
doesn't need it.  But the chief one is this:  No matter how you define
it, two years later, there will be an application/hardware platform for
which the two year old tasking model just won't work.  If past
experience is any guide, it will actually be two MONTHs later.
 
Then, you will have the enviable task of approaching some gentleman with
stars on his shoulders (or, worse, a committee), and explaining to
him/them why you need Ada/Ada9x changed again, and he/they'll reply "No
problem at all, babe;  give us about ten years.  Don't call us, we'll
call you."
 
Your friend Al, of course, working on a similar problem in private
industry, will simply write up a slightly different version of some
Pascal or C++ tasking library.  Probably take him about 2 weeks.
 
 
 
 
Ted Holden
HTE