From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" Date: 2007-04-19T23:23:56+09:00 Subject: Re: Could Ruby be a good Erlang-like? Eleanor McHugh wrote: > On 19 Apr 2007, at 04:51, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote: >> Eleanor McHugh wrote: >>> I'm not sure that Erlang is the right place to be looking for good >>> Ruby concurrency models, given the fundamental differences between >>> the two languages. What I think would be interesting though is if >>> some of the CSP and Pi-Calculus inspired stuff that's being worked >>> on by the KRoC team (http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/ofa/kroc/) >>> make it into the Ruby world. >> Uh ... I'll go check it out, but don't get me started on Pi-Calculus >> vs. Petri Nets in the Business Process Modeling arena. :) Suffice it >> to say I've been studying Petri nets for something like 20 years now >> and I find Pi-Calculus and CSP (and related process algebra >> notations) dang near impossible to read as a result. > > Well I can't say I like the maths notations much - reminds me too much > of studying control theory back in the 80s and wondering why my > lecturer was so excited about what amounts to little more than > plumbing diagrams. It's so ironic that I ended up working in embedded > control systems... > > I think possibly I'm more attracted to the Occam-pi language > structures as I can sense ways in which they can be implemented using > Ruby's threads or dRb/Rinda and multiple processes. I took a cruise by the web site and I must say it was interesting but I have a very bad taste in my mouth from Occam. I used to work for a company called Floating Point Systems. A bunch of very bright folks bet a big chunk of the company on the Transputer and Occam. It was a classic case of a beautiful theory being murdered by a gang of brutal facts. There were less than a handful of Occam programmers in the world. Our marketplace consisted of FORTRAN, C, and to a certain extent Pascal programmers. To be blunt, Erlang is a production-ready, commercially supported industrial strength programming environment -- no, let me make that stronger -- *software engineering environment* with a lot of momentum and a strong open-source community. Occam, CSP, the Pi-Calculus and Pi-Occam aren't. Aside from the obvious entrenched position of the Pi-Calculus in business process modeling, I don't see much other than another beautiful theory walking alone on a dark and stormy night in a very bad neighborhood. :) For a more positive spin on the subject, for those interested in the "obvious entrenched position" I mentioned above, see _Essential Business Process Modeling_ by Michael Harvey. Anybody who implements business applications, in Ruby or otherwise, should have a firm grasp of the contents thereof. -- M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, FBG, AB, PTA, PGS, MS, MNLP, NST, ACMC(P) http://borasky-research.net/ If God had meant for carrots to be eaten cooked, He would have given rabbits fire.