4 ms·

Visualizing Concurrency in Go (2016)

282 points by velodrome 9y ago

Groxx 9y ago
I saw the video a while ago - really neat technique, I love the visual differences between patterns. Love that it's written down - far too much great material is locked up, unsearchable, in videos.
psiclops 9y ago
previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10981616 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10981616
ziikutv 9y ago
This is really cool. I wonder at what point WebGL craps out. How many concurrent processes can it handle?
Dangeranger 9y ago
This is very nice. Does anyone have an idea of how to extend the visualization so that they could be rendered based on the actual runtime of a real program? I have a theory that much complexity could be understood if humans could just see the interactions and the data flowing. Even if the program took 100X longer to run, if you can see the bug, you can fix it. If you can see the complexity, you can understand it.
- yorwba 9y ago
  He describes that the visualizations are generated by logging the relevant events from a running program, so I'm not sure what you mean by extending it to render based on the "actual runtime of a real program".
- hacker_9 9y ago
  This is an oft used technique in gamedev, where instead of print statements we will print out visualisations to the screen, such as bounding boxes, trajectory lines, etc.
asswhole 9y ago
Great Job!
asswhole 9y ago
Great Job!
amelius 9y ago
This is nice. I'm wondering how you would use it though. Probably you'd start analyzing the diagram at the top, then look at what will happen next, and then the next, etc. But this is basically the same as just looking at the log. Am I missing something?
opaque 9y ago
> If I ask you something involving “numbers from 1 to 100” you will have your own image of the series in your head, even without realizing it. For example, I imagine it as a line going from me with numbers from 1 to 20, then it turns 90 degrees to the right and continues to the 1000+. Actually no, perhaps you're not aware of this, but you have a condition called spatial-sequence Synesthesia. It's a harmless and fascinating condition in which the senses have arbitrary connections to each other (numbers have colours, sounds have tastes). Many people are unaware of it. I've only heard of it because a friend at university (and also a Synesthete) researches it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-butterfly/201104/are-you-synesthete https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-butterfly/20110...
- hacker_9 9y ago
  Quite a leap to diagnose such a condition over the internet. To me it just seemed like a bad example. His second example works though, if you try to force a visualisation in your mind: "Another common example is the visual representation of the full year with four seasons"
  - opaque 9y ago
    True, I should say the author "may" have Synaesthesia. But the spacial appearance of a number line is an absolutely textbook example of it. The interesting thing about his choice of example is that's what he perceives and he assumes everyone else also has a spacial representation of numbers. Most Synaesthestes don't realise there's anything different about their thinking until they hear about the condition. So, I just wanted to make the author (and others) aware of it for their interest.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  > I recall from very young period of my life that in our kindergarten there were numbers in a cloakroom, written along the wall, and number 20 was exactly at the corner. Maybe this is why and not Synesthesia?
xg15 9y ago
This looks like a useful approach to visualize the interactions between different services in a SOA or microservice-based architecture. (You'd need some way for each service to log its send and receive events without the logging slowing everything down though) In any case, a very cool idea. I really like the use of 3D to fit more nodes into the diagram without it getting unreadable. I think this is an approach that could help with visualizing large graphs in general - it would be cool if there was more research about that.
eddd 9y ago
That's a really neat way of explaining concurrency model. I did something similar for Erlang VM http://eddwardo.github.io/elixir/links/2015/11/04/links-in-elixir/ http://eddwardo.github.io/elixir/links/2015/11/04/links-in-e... (less advanced). I'd love to see comparison of these two models.
mihau 9y ago
This is powerful, I wish ideas like that might impact debuggers and provide alternative ways of visualizing code, programs and even whole systems running in production.
gens 9y ago
Tony Hoare’s paper is one of the most amazing papers i read (not that i understood all of it). You can get it at http://www.usingcsp.com/ http://www.usingcsp.com/

282 points by velodrome 9y ago

I saw the video a while ago - really neat technique, I love the visual differences between patterns. Love that it's written down - far too much great material is locked up, unsearchable, in videos.

psiclops 9y ago

previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10981616 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10981616

ziikutv 9y ago

This is really cool. I wonder at what point WebGL craps out. How many concurrent processes can it handle?

Dangeranger 9y ago

This is very nice. Does anyone have an idea of how to extend the visualization so that they could be rendered based on the actual runtime of a real program? I have a theory that much complexity could be understood if humans could just see the interactions and the data flowing. Even if the program took 100X longer to run, if you can see the bug, you can fix it. If you can see the complexity, you can understand it.

yorwba 9y ago
He describes that the visualizations are generated by logging the relevant events from a running program, so I'm not sure what you mean by extending it to render based on the "actual runtime of a real program".
hacker_9 9y ago
This is an oft used technique in gamedev, where instead of print statements we will print out visualisations to the screen, such as bounding boxes, trajectory lines, etc.

asswhole 9y ago

Great Job!

asswhole 9y ago

Great Job!

amelius 9y ago

This is nice. I'm wondering how you would use it though. Probably you'd start analyzing the diagram at the top, then look at what will happen next, and then the next, etc. But this is basically the same as just looking at the log. Am I missing something?

opaque 9y ago

> If I ask you something involving “numbers from 1 to 100” you will have your own image of the series in your head, even without realizing it. For example, I imagine it as a line going from me with numbers from 1 to 20, then it turns 90 degrees to the right and continues to the 1000+. Actually no, perhaps you're not aware of this, but you have a condition called spatial-sequence Synesthesia. It's a harmless and fascinating condition in which the senses have arbitrary connections to each other (numbers have colours, sounds have tastes). Many people are unaware of it. I've only heard of it because a friend at university (and also a Synesthete) researches it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-butterfly/201104/are-you-synesthete https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-butterfly/20110...

hacker_9 9y ago
Quite a leap to diagnose such a condition over the internet. To me it just seemed like a bad example. His second example works though, if you try to force a visualisation in your mind: "Another common example is the visual representation of the full year with four seasons"
- opaque 9y ago
  True, I should say the author "may" have Synaesthesia. But the spacial appearance of a number line is an absolutely textbook example of it. The interesting thing about his choice of example is that's what he perceives and he assumes everyone else also has a spacial representation of numbers. Most Synaesthestes don't realise there's anything different about their thinking until they hear about the condition. So, I just wanted to make the author (and others) aware of it for their interest.
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
> I recall from very young period of my life that in our kindergarten there were numbers in a cloakroom, written along the wall, and number 20 was exactly at the corner. Maybe this is why and not Synesthesia?

xg15 9y ago

This looks like a useful approach to visualize the interactions between different services in a SOA or microservice-based architecture. (You'd need some way for each service to log its send and receive events without the logging slowing everything down though) In any case, a very cool idea. I really like the use of 3D to fit more nodes into the diagram without it getting unreadable. I think this is an approach that could help with visualizing large graphs in general - it would be cool if there was more research about that.

eddd 9y ago

That's a really neat way of explaining concurrency model. I did something similar for Erlang VM http://eddwardo.github.io/elixir/links/2015/11/04/links-in-elixir/ http://eddwardo.github.io/elixir/links/2015/11/04/links-in-e... (less advanced). I'd love to see comparison of these two models.

mihau 9y ago

This is powerful, I wish ideas like that might impact debuggers and provide alternative ways of visualizing code, programs and even whole systems running in production.

gens 9y ago

Tony Hoare’s paper is one of the most amazing papers i read (not that i understood all of it). You can get it at http://www.usingcsp.com/ http://www.usingcsp.com/