Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer
From: pawlak@zeubac.desy.de (Jerzy Michal Pawlak)
Subject: Re: Conundrum: Where is the parallelism lost?
Organization: Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY
Date: 15 Sep 1994 20:36:03 GMT
Message-ID: <35ab7k$lnc@dscomsa.desy.de>


In article <779493613snz@walker.demon.co.uk>, paul@walker.demon.co.uk (Paul Walker) writes:
>
>So if structured programming is basically parallel programming, why
>can this parallelism not be retained until the program meets the machine
>on which it is to run?
>
Programming language - most of them are sequential. So the programmers are
taught from the beginning to think sequentially, and do the translation
from parallel world to a sequential computer completely uncounciously, they
don't even think that it could be different... 

Even worse - many of them are scared by the idea that a program may NOT be
sequential. I had recently to work with several young students on real-time
projects (just little DAQ systems - nothing fancy). The very idea of
starting several processes, or even using interrupts was frightening them 
(no, no, it's too complicated! I'll simply poll the device and the keyboard 
- no problem in that! I know, it's not very efficient, but it's OK for me...)

So - well, I'd love to get a student who knows nothing about programming
(very difficult these days, when kids have 'computers' at home), teach him
OCCAM as the first programming language and see what comes out...
-- 
Michal (pawlak@zeubac.desy.de)

