scott@cs.rochester.edu (Michael Scott) (05/12/89)
In article <5442@hubcap.clemson.edu> carriero@YALE.EDU (Nicholas Carriero) writes: | Speculative arguments about Linda's efficiency are irrelevant; eight | years ago they made sense, but today there are a large number of | efficient implementations. (We've made this point recently, so we | won't elaborate here). I've been trying to sit this discussion out, but I can't contain myself any longer. "Speculative arguments about Linda's efficiency" ARE relevant precisely because Linda proponents have had eight years to make the case and they haven't succeeded. Linda is a simple, elegant, and appealing approach to writing parallel programs. For small-scale parallelism with medium to coarse-grain process interactions it is clearly very nice. For large-scale parallel programming, however, Linda has problems with efficiency, modularity, and scalability that have not been resolved and that I do not believe can be resolved. The burden of proof lies on the Linda camp. They have yet to produce a single application that addresses the performance question convincingly. How long is the world supposed to wait? -- Michael L. Scott University of Rochester (716) 275-7745 scott@cs.rochester.edu scott%rochester@CSNET-RELAY {decvax, allegra, cmcl2}!rochester!scott