From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2006-11-08T00:34:26+09:00
Subject: Book wanted: Concurrent Ruby Programming (was Re: Book wanted: Metaprogramming in Ruby)

Ola Bini wrote:
> M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
>> Bil Kleb wrote:
>>> Jay Levitt wrote:
>>>> Anyone wanna write this next?  
>>> FWIW, at Agile 2006 Martin Fowler mentioned he
>>> might write one on DSLs.
>>>
>>> Later,
>>> -- 
>>> Bil Kleb
>>> http://kleb.tadalist.com/lists/public/427170
>>>
>>>
>> Actually, if Martin Fowler wants to write another book, he should expand
>> "Refactoring" and translate it into Ruby. :)
>>
>> Seriously, though, I'm not sure a whole book on metaprogramming,
>> Ruby-based or otherwise, is either necessary or useful at this point in
>> the technology cycle. There are quite a few articles on the subject.
>> What I'd rather see a book on is dealing with *concurrency* in Ruby.
>> Dual-core and quad-core chips aren't going away. :) Francis? You're our
>> resident expert, I think ...
>>
>>
>
> But concurrency in Ruby is still green threads, so that would have to
> be either concurrency with YARV, or concurrency with separate Ruby
> processes communicating in some way.
That was actually my purpose in making the suggestion ... to stimulate
debate about concurrency in Ruby, the major differences between the
current 1.8 and proposed 1.9/2.0 concurrency tools, the way other
languages deal, successfully or unsuccessfully, with concurrency, etc.,
etc., etc. :)

I think Erlang is the horse to challenge in this race, or perhaps, on a
more theoretical note, the Pi-calculus. And right now, EventMachine
appears to be Ruby's horse in the race, which is why I suggested that
Francis write the book. :)

On a related note, some Scheme folks have implemented "Erlang-like"
lightweight processes. Here's a link to the paper; I've got the software
installed but haven't had a chance to experiment with it.

http://scheme2006.cs.uchicago.edu/09-germain.pdf