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Nitpick: Node doesn't do anything in parallel, it can't, it does things concurrently.
by sausagefeet 15y ago
Nitpick: Node doesn't do anything in parallel, it can't, it does things concurrently.
- Fenn 15y agoHmm, nice spot. Incorrect assumption of synonyms on my part.
- IbJacked 15y agoBut, um, concurrently means "at the same time," too. Merriam's first definition is actually "running parallel." Wouldn't it be better to describe it as running serially, using non-blocking asynchronous function calls? Guess that doesn't really roll of the tongue, though.
- sausagefeet 15y agoIn computer science the two terms are generally distinguished, while you're free to redefine them commonly when people say concurrency they refer to a model of performing things at the same time but may not actually be simultaneous. Parallelism is generally the actual act of it running simultaneously.
- IbJacked 15y agoFair enough, I was unaware of the common distinction in the CS domain.
- wunderfool 15y agothen Merriam is wrong. concurrency is not parallelism concurrency is a design consideration that provides for resource isolation. parallelism is about algorithms designed to be executed on parallel architectures google it, there are dozens of informative discussions
- randylahey 15y agoNitpick: Incorrect. Node.js uses a thread-pool to run things which are necessarily blocking, such as some POSIX functions.
- gcr 15y agosausagefeet meant we can't get to that thread pool from user code.