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From: hall@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu (Marty Hall)
Subject: Re: A modest proposal
Message-ID: <DvGKuK.JF5@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu>
Organization: JHU/APL Research Center, Hopkins P/T CS Faculty
References: <4sj2ft$22j@triglav.iwaynet.net> <01bb7b03$41549080$118549c2@my-computer> <4tm2uc$gki@Venus.mcs.com>
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 12:18:19 GMT
Lines: 27

In article <4tm2uc$gki@Venus.mcs.com> munyer@MCS.COM (Robert Munyer) writes:
>In article <01bb7b03$41549080$118549c2@my-computer>,
>Roly Perera <rolyp@private.nethead.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> Part of the problem is that it's not very good at executing as a
>> _server_ process.  Modern business systems usually use a client/server
>> or peer-to-peer distributed architecture where a given process may
>> have to handle multiple, asynchronous client requests simultaneously.
>> Common Lisp doesn't support the notion of a thread, and pretty much
>> allocates all storage on the heap, making it unsuitable for this
>> kind of thing.
>
>It is not unsuitable.  Here are three reasons:
[...]
>2. Allocating structures on the heap is no problem for multi-threading,
[...]
>The big problem with multi-threading in Lisp is that there is no
>universal standard API.

Java allocates all object instances on the heap, and has a standard
threading API. So I agree that heap allocation is not a problem for
threading, and that the problem in Lisp is not that threading is not
possible, just that it is not standard.
						- Marty

Lisp Resources: <http://www.apl.jhu.edu/~hall/lisp.html>
Java Resources: <http://www.apl.jhu.edu/~hall/java/>
