In article , "Del Cecchi" writes: |> |> If it is such a great idea, why can't he convince some venture |> capitalists it is so?
Now, THAT's unfair. Persuasiveness and inventiveness very rarely occur in the same person.
However, let's stick to the technical aspects, as we are better at those - well, I am :-) To describe the author of that as an idiot is unfair on the vast majority of idiots. This is actually SO bad that I find it amusing. Let's select some of the points he has highlighted.
I'll get right to the point. If your multicore CPU or concurrent programming language or operating system does not support fine-grain, instruction-level parallelism in a MIMD (multiple instruction, multiple data) environment, it is crap.
OK, I'll buy that. I have been saying something similar for years, after all, except that I probably don't mean what he does. I will post a SEPARATE message on the points I agree with him.
Fast, fine-grain, instruction-level parallelism using MIMD. What is the point of parallelism otherwise? ...
Exposure of ignorance, plus refusal to learn. 'Nuff said?
Easy software composition. This means a graphical interface for non-algorithmic programming, among other things. It also means plug-compatible components. Just drag'm and drop'm. No more (text-based) computer languages, por favor!
Ditto. That has been a hot research topic for 30+ years and, like the semantic analysis of natural languages, the more that you learn, the less of the problem that you even understand. It's actually a deep psychological problem as well as an IT one.
Deterministic timing of events at the elementary operation level. Deterministic temporal order is a must for reliability. This is possible only by adopting a convention whereby all instructions (elementary operations) are parallel reactive processes and have equal durations based on a virtual system-wide clock.
Ditto. Mathematicians can prove both that it is inherently not scalable and that it it isn't enough, and engineers have confirmed that the mathematics matches reality.
Automatic resolution of data dependencies. This eliminates blind code and otherwise hidden side effects of code modification. It is an essential ingredient for reliability. It can only be done using a reactive synchronous software model.
Ditto. Both mathematicians and engineers can witness that it helps with only one cause of such problems, there are other known approaches to reliability, and his pet technique doesn't provide it anyway.
Impregnable security. This is possible only in a system that enforces deterministic timing.
Ditto. Both mathematicians and engineers can witness it is twaddle.
Regards, Nick Maclaren.