From: MenTaLguY <mental@...>
Date: 2008-02-14T04:42:24+09:00
Subject: Re: Actors and Concurrency

On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 04:28:33 +0900, Leonard Cuff <lcuff@valueclick.com> wrote:
> I'm a newbie, so please set me straight. I've seen several people make the
> statement that 'Ruby does not have concurrency'. If this is so, what is
> the Threads class all about? And what is happening in this piece of code...Is
> this somehow the appearance of concurrency without being 'real'
> concurrency?

Unfortunately, people are confusing concurrency with simultaneity.  Most
Ruby implementations (JRuby is an exception) do not permit Ruby threads
to run truly simultaneously (e.g. on multiple processors); instead,
their execution is simply interleaved in a non-deterministic fashion.

However, this is still concurrency in the technical sense of the term.

-mental