Re: Teaching Concurrency

[marks@agcsun.UUCP (Mark Shepherd)]

In article <7588@hubcap.clemson.edu>, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu (Bill Wolfe) 
posts some excerpts from an article on the teaching of concurrency
in ACM SIGAda Ada Letters. The article discusses programming assignments
where concurrent tasks are used for things like sorting numbers, solving 
equations, finding primes, etc.

Although these programming assignments evidently had some valuable lessons
on multi-tasking, I feel that they may also inadventantly teach a
less desirable lesson: that it is OK to use concurrent tasks for things 
that could be done much more simply with subroutines. 

In real life (whether industrial, business, scientific research, or whatever),
multi-tasking applications carry substantial penalties
in complexity and resource utilization, and should only be used when
appropriate. (Of course, NOT using tasking when it should be used has  
equally dire consequences). 

I have seen large (and expensive!) systems crippled by inappropriate use
of tasking, and I hope the the computer science graduates of the future
will understand not only HOW to use multi-tasking, but WHEN.

Mark Shepherd
agcsun!marks@boulder.colorado.edu