Re: Latin, Shakespeare, and other irrelevant topics

["Alexandre E. Kopilovitch" <aek@vib.usr.pu.ru>]

Robert Dewar <dewar@gnat.com> wrote:
>>   Why that isn't enough? Why that "time-slicing" can't simulate an effect of
>> two cooperating persons?
>>   (For another division you may imagine an Artistic Office and Pure Enginerring
>> Office, for example.)
>
>I am completely puzzled by this, the problem with one person
>trying to build a large house or a large program is that it
>would take too long, how can the above hokey separation (which
>can only slow things down) possibly help in the slightest to
>make more hours in the day??? :-)

Multiprocessing is not always a good thing. It is definitily good if you
typically should process multiple independent and impatient requests, which
happens when you are contacting with a naturally parallel environment.
But there is an obvious price - you need to allocate the resources for
synchronization and arbitration. That is equally true for computers and for
human teams.
  There are two different tasks: to build a program, and to introduce it
to the potential users, that is, to persuade them to adopt your product.
Although within some environments those tasks can be done concurrently, and
even help each other (as you continually demonstrate with the GNAT), they still
remain substantially different by their nature. In both tasks you have a
queue of particular problems, but the character of those queues is quite
different: for the 1st case (building a program) you have a queue with waiting
and the opportunities for various global optimizations (of the queue), while
for the 2nd case you have a queue with a very limited wait (a request leaves
the queue if it isn't serviced within some time interval).
  So, in the 1st case our main concern is complexity, while in the 2nd case
our main concerns are similar to those associated with the real-time processing
pattern. And my question was about the 1st case only, where one may sometimes
apply the quote: "he travels the fastest, who travels alone".

By the way, one method to make more hours in the day is to slow down the Earth
spinning -:)