Re: [Caml-list] ocaml and concurrency

[Alex Baretta <alex@baretta.com>]

Martin Berger wrote:

> i wonder why. ocaml essentially offers the same approaches to
> concurrency as do the relevant java or C/C++ libraries.
> as far as i can see, there's nothing in Ocaml's approach to shared
> memory concurrency that would prevent deadlocks or lack of mutual
> exclusion, and there's nothing that prevents the usual problems
> with message passing, like lack of liveness. you do have more expressive
> types in Ocaml, but that is orthogonal to concurrency.
> 
> martin

You are right. No tool can save you from deadlocks or races in a 
concurrent environment. The properties of being free from deadlocks and 
free from races depend on the characteristics of the distributed 
algorithm implemented by the program, not by the 
multithreading/multiprocessing abstraction facilities in the language. 
Yet, it is immensely better to to write concurrent software in a purely 
functional style with a garbage collected language, while taking 
advantage of a functional message passing library. Ifk you really have 
to dig your own grave, get yourself a Caterpillar.

Alex

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