Geekspotting

[ralphmelton]

Today, Lori and I went down to have lunch at Si Senor.

There was another group of casually-dressed white collar co-workers there--it turned out that they were from Print Cafe, in the Strip.

While we ate, one of the Print Cafe guys was talking about the problems of synchronization with multi-threading. He couldn't remember the word "atomic" and was using "autonomous" instead, and I found myself really wanting to interrupt "helpfully" and suggest the correct word. But I didn't.

All through lunch, though, I listened to him talking about workarounds for the fact that their language didn't have any synchronization. And I was quietly thinking to myself, "You are so doomed."

At the end of lunch, as they were getting up to leave, I did pipe up to ask what language they were using. They said that they were using JavaScript, and yes it didn't have any synchronization primitives. They'd started with a much simpler system, and it had mushroomed to the point that threading had become a problem. I sympathized; I had had that experience with Tcl/Tk at one point.

I wish them well, but I still think they're up a creek.

Comments

[seanmcguire.livejournal.com]

From what I hear, they're pretty doomed anyway...

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Oh? Tell me more?

[seanmcguire.livejournal.com]

I don't have much detail - this is Just What I Hear. My boss has some contacts there, people who used to work with him... sounds like their business plan isn't necessarily terribly viable (but I don't know details). OTOH, they did just get some significant amount of funding, so maybe the VC know something we don't.

[eub.livejournal.com]

I have a hopelessly naive question. Why does Javascript choose to expose a threading API, then?

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

If I knew, I would tell you.

(It may be that it doesn't, but there are threading issues from the browser that's being used. I don't really know.)