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> Multicore is definitely must for functional languages.(sorry random thought) ...why?

• i_s 10y ago
  May be worth exploring this from the other side too. Why do you think it is ok for a programming language to lock people into to using just 1 core per process?
  • thinkpad20 10y ago
    I think most would agree that multicore capability is desirable, but it's clearly not a "must" as ocaml has been without it all of this time and many have used it to good effect regardless (of course it might be a must to certain people who need it for their use case). Also, the same restriction that prevents multicore in ocaml (the GIL) also affects other languages which are obviously useful, such as Python. So to answer your question it's clearly "ok" since it doesn't prevent people from productively writing effective and useful software in it, although it is of course a restriction which many would like to see go away.
  • whateveracct 10y ago
    To be fair, the current multiprocess approach that OCaml concurrency libraries use handles the most common concurrency need (concurrent io) just fine. Multicore is most useful for CPU-bound computations.
• Scarbutt 10y ago
  Definitely not a must, I guess he may be referfing to how immutability and pure functions bring great benefits for writing concurrent programs.
• desireco42 10y ago
  I didn't want to take it away from announcement. I see others are saying it might not be as important. I believe it to be main attraction of functional languages. We don't want to be stuck on single processor forever and immutability is allowing us to spread wings and utilize processors better. So that is why I think it is imperative ( :) ) to have this as a feature of functional languages.