Re: why not

["Matthew Heaney" <mheaney@on2.com>]

"Darren New" <dnew@san.rr.com> wrote in message
news:3BE03E54.57E0E6C8@san.rr.com...
> Marin David Condic wrote:
> > Well, we aren't exactly seeing a huge consensus here about what people
want,
> > right? :-)
>
> I think everyone is pretty much agreeing that what's needed are lists
> and maps, both task safe and efficient versions. The rest is just
> details. ;-)

We certainly do NOT agree that data structures should be "task safe."  If a
user needs a data structure to work in the presence of multiple threads,
then he needs to build those semantics himself using other primitives
provided by the language.  This is completely consistent with how Text_IO
and Numerics.Discrete_Random (for example) are defined.

> No question. But then it's harder to precisely specify what the behavior
> is without saying "it behaves like this implementation."

You need to specify time and space semantics for any abstraction.  This is a
solved problem.

> > Since apparently C++ has succeeded in including a similar library in its
> > standard, I wouldn't think the task is either impossible or totally
> > undesirable. I'd just favor a more gradual approach.
>
> But have they succeeded? It took years before any of the STL
> implementations were compatible and correct, IIRC.

FUD.  Of course they succeeded.  C++ is vastly simpler to use now that the
STL is part of the standard.