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Naive threads and async are for fundamentally different tasks: Threads are for working in parallel, splitting a single compute-intensive tasks into many. Asyn

by ttfkam 3y ago

Naive threads and async are for fundamentally different tasks: Threads are for working in parallel, splitting a single compute-intensive tasks into many. Async is for waiting in parallel for disk I/O results, database queries, network responses, etc. The former are for doing more work. The latter is for efficiently waiting for others to do their work without using a bunch of excess thread context resources. You don't reduce complexity by ignoring the difference between two quite distinct use cases. That's false simplicity.

hu3 3y ago
The point is you don't need native threads. You can use lightweight (green) threads. So if a green thread is waiting for I/O, another can use the CPU just fine. Yes there's context switching but it does scale and code becomes simpler to write and reason about.
fiedzia 3y ago
> without using a bunch of excess thread context resources If the threads are cheap, there is no point in making this distinction, which greatly simplifies the language. And they can be, we just need programming languages designed for that.
- ttfkam 3y ago
  Some people, when confronted with a problem, think, “I know, I’ll use threads,” and then two they hav erpoblesms. – Ned Batchelder
- ttfkam 3y ago
  Non-blocking I/O channels use fewer threads (native or green) than tasks. Some programming languages ARE designed to handle this: they use async/await. You could argue that Go does this more elegantly with goroutines, but this further highlights the point that threads should not be a silver bullet to development models.
- the_biot 3y ago
  Here, here. The elephant in the room in just about any discussion about threads/async is Python. Threads simply don't function in Python because of the GIL. Instead of accepting this fact and using another language if threads are needed, Python has been doing various async-style things for years and pretending it's good enough, including what can only be described as cooperative multitasking, that horror from the early 90s.
  - fiedzia 3y ago
    Python is working on removing GIL (I am not sure about timeframe) and will have subinterpreters - the last one will come in 3.13 and solves the thread problem.

by ttfkam 3y ago

hu3 3y ago

The point is you don't need native threads. You can use lightweight (green) threads. So if a green thread is waiting for I/O, another can use the CPU just fine. Yes there's context switching but it does scale and code becomes simpler to write and reason about.

fiedzia 3y ago

> without using a bunch of excess thread context resources If the threads are cheap, there is no point in making this distinction, which greatly simplifies the language. And they can be, we just need programming languages designed for that.

ttfkam 3y ago
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think, “I know, I’ll use threads,” and then two they hav erpoblesms. – Ned Batchelder
ttfkam 3y ago
Non-blocking I/O channels use fewer threads (native or green) than tasks. Some programming languages ARE designed to handle this: they use async/await. You could argue that Go does this more elegantly with goroutines, but this further highlights the point that threads should not be a silver bullet to development models.
the_biot 3y ago
Here, here. The elephant in the room in just about any discussion about threads/async is Python. Threads simply don't function in Python because of the GIL. Instead of accepting this fact and using another language if threads are needed, Python has been doing various async-style things for years and pretending it's good enough, including what can only be described as cooperative multitasking, that horror from the early 90s.
- fiedzia 3y ago
  Python is working on removing GIL (I am not sure about timeframe) and will have subinterpreters - the last one will come in 3.13 and solves the thread problem.