Linked by Hadrien Grasland on Fri 27th May 2011 11:34 UTC
After having an interesting discussion with Brendan on the topic of deadlocks in threaded and asynchronous event handling systems (see the comments on this blog post), I just had something to ask to the developers on OSnews: could you live without blocking API calls? Could you work with APIs where lengthy tasks like writing to a file, sending a signal, doing network I/O, etc is done in a nonblocking fashion, with only callbacks as a mechanism to return results and notify your software when an operation is done?
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Member since:2007-09-22
Actually most people working on 'frontend development' (javascript, html, css and so in the browser) are already wired to doing it the event-driven way and they like it.
It is how it was intended to be used in the browser, it's is probably better to not fight it. There is already enough fighting with browsers. ;-)
RE: Comment by Mystilleef
by Delgarde on Sun 29th May 2011 21:45
in reply to "Comment by Mystilleef"
Member since:2008-08-19
However, I know many developers (usually with a background in web development) who hate callback based programming. They claim it's hard to understand.
Like Lennie said, that's a weird thing to say. Web developers, of all people, are most accustomed to dealing with async behaviour. Javascript is a fundamentally single-threaded event-driven language, and it's been Javascript developers (via frameworks like Node.js) that have been pushing the async model into server side code in recent years...
RE[2]: Comment by Mystilleef
by Mystilleef on Mon 30th May 2011 06:00
in reply to "RE: Comment by Mystilleef"
Member since:2005-06-29
It's still a novel idea in the web arena. Async event-based programming has been the way to program desktops apps for about 2 decades. Web app development is still predominantly synchronous. Async event-based web frameworks are the exceptions, not the norm, in web programming. Remember Javascript only started being abused a few years ago with the hype that "Ajax" spurred.
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/13/13 14:35 UTC
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/11/13 17:07 UTC
We already talked about iOS 7 yesterday (after a night of sleep, it's only looking worse and worse - look at this, for Fiona's sake!), so now it's time to talk about the downright stunning and belly flutters-inducing new Mac Pro. As former owner and huge, huge, huge fan of the PowerMac G4 Cube - I haven't been this excited about an Apple product since, well, I would say the iMac G4. This is the Apple I used to love.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/10/13 23:13 UTC
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/08/13 14:57 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/07/13 11:40 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/04/13 12:45 UTC
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Linked by nfeske on 05/31/13 10:12 UTC
With version 13.05, the developers of the Genode OS Framework take measures to ensure that Genode continues to scale well with a growing number of users and the steadily broadening platform coverage. Further highlights are the improved SoC support for Exynos 5, OMAP4, Raspberry Pi, i.MX, and new components for realizing headless systems.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/29/13 16:59 UTC
At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories - there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 17:26 UTC
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!More Features »
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Member since:
2005-06-29
That's the only way things ever work properly in the real world, asynchronous event-based message-passing systems. I don't ever use blocking calls. I always opt for non-blocking calls. If anything, it forces me to write robust code.
I've noticed the wild assumptions programmers make when writing code based on blocking calls is monumental. The obvious dangerous assumption is that the call will complete successfully, if at all! That's where the cards begin to fall because if that call does not complete, for 10 million and 1 possible reasons, your program just hung indefinitely or crashed.
I learned the hard way. Anyone, who has done any kind of desktop application development probably has an endless list of war stories about the perils of blocking calls.
However, I know many developers (usually with a background in web development) who hate callback based programming. They claim it's hard to understand.