[plt-scheme] Creating a suspended thread

On 14-Apr-09, at 12:01 AM, Eli Barzilay wrote:

> On Apr 13, Marc Feeley wrote:
>>
>> The problem of conflating thread creation and activation is no
>> different than the problem of conflating function creation and
>> variable definition (which Scheme chose not to conflate).  You can
>> simulate anonymous functions with named functions by using a
>> temporary name.  But you pay a price in program clarity (elegance?)
>> and in run time cost (unless you have a Sufficiently Smart(tm)
>> compiler).
>
> Going down to more primitive forms doesn't always mean gaining clarity
> (or elegance) -- otherwise machine code would be much better than
> Scheme, and `call-with-current-continuation' would be much better than
> `let/cc'.  In other words, Scheme *did* choose to conflate a good
> number of features in its function form...
>
> More seriously, if the kind of problems that are solved by separating
> thread-creation from thread-activation can be solved with channels,
> then I choose the higher-level operation.  If it does turn out that
> there are some cases where the mzscheme facilities are insufficient,
> then my guess is that these cases are rare enough that paying the
> extra cost (if there is any) is perfectly fine with me -- in exactly
> the same way that I still prefer `lambda' as a better alternative to
> the low level features it conflates.


My position is that the lower level of a thread system should provide  
"make-thread" and "thread-start!".  The higher level procedure  
"thread" can be provided as a convenience to the user and be defined  
(by the runtime system) simply as:

(define (thread thunk)
   (thread-start! (make-thread thunk)))

That way the programmer can easily access the fundamental operations  
if he so wishes.  In other words

   thread = make-thread + thread-start!

It is analogous to saying

   "procedure definition" = lambda + "variable definition"

i.e.

(define (f x) (* x x)) = (define f (lambda (x) (* x x)))

The "lower level" features (lambda and define) are convenient to have  
even though a large part of many programs don't need them explicitly  
if procedures are defined using the special notation for procedure  
definition.

I'll shut up now!

Marc