Re: [Chicken-users] Please do not drop 'thread-terminate!' from the SRFI 18 impl

[Elf]

On Sat, 9 Aug 2008, John Cowan wrote:

> Kon Lovett scripsit:
>
> > I guess I just prefer social rather than legal prescriptions.
> > Prohibition is an attack on symptoms & not causes.
>
> Why have we eliminated dynamic binding of lambda variables?  Why
> don't we allow you to take the car or cdr of (), or of a symbol?
> Why are uncontrolled define-macro macros on their way out?
> Because having them does more harm than good.
>
> Uncontrolled use of threads is the same story.

not really.

you cant take the car or cdr of an atomic object: the slots dont exist.
threads do exist, and they can be killed.

define-macro is a subject of much contention.  it doesn't seem to be on the
way out for CL, or for any of the r4 implementations, and note that RSC macros
are basically the same thing...

these arent relevant comparisons.  more relevant comparisons would be other
thread/concurrency systems: do any not allow threads to be killed?
pth has suspend and cancel, with certain restrictions to prevent inconsistency.
posix.1 does as well.
nspr seems to.
winapi does.

a more relevant comparison (and answer) might be 'why don't we get rid of 
'kill -9'?'


i dont think removing necessary, albeit dangerous (atm), functionality is a 
good idea.


-elf