Random thoughts

[Jon A. Lambert]

> From: coder at ibm.net
> On 05/04/97 at 06:02 PM, "Jon A. Lambert" <jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com> said:
> > My building programs will be GUI editors with nice point and
> >click interfaces and the language used by them will be minimal and
> >integrated into the building interface.  This will probably end up
> >resembling a Visual Basic IDE environment (*giggle*).  Controls which
> >represent "black box" C++ programs  can be happily dragged about and
> >attached to objects, rooms and NPCs. They will have properties boxes for
> >minimal tailoring.  I wasn't kidding about the Visual Mud++ with
> >ActiveMud controls concepts!  Lets just hope Microsoft doesn't get wind
> >of it, so shhhh!.  Currently my proposed minimal  language seems to
> >closely resemble a subset of Fortran with very weak typing  though this
> >was not my original intention.  
> 
> Now *THIS* is an idea.  I could actually do a whole bunch of this
> currently.  Things like spoofs and watchers are really just instantiated
> templates with local twiddles.  Changing minor aspects of the rest of the
> class structure could....hurm...would not be so easy.
> 
> Gotta look at this more.
> 
> >Wait, on second thought this might be
> >Rexx.  
> 
> >> > How does this handle the Dragon's Dinner scenario, ala:
<snipped  - you've probably put us all through it :-) >
> 
> For me there actually is no problem as the general area is resolved by my
> lockless/retry model (the old C&C business I detailed, Oh, about 6 - 8
> postings ago -- I'll repost if needed.).  Essentially the two events
> execute in parallel, but one gets to C&C first and commits, the other then
> fails C&C, and retries/reschedules.  This only works becuase all events
> only modify and access local data prior to C&C.
> 
Concerning the C&C (copy and compare(?)):

The DB is not comparing the object on an element by element basis, is it?
Is it doing a memory contents comparison?
Does the object contain a "magic number"?
Does this copy and compare include object method code? 

I'm thinking of using a "magic-number" marking to determine whether my objects
are dirty in cache.  Can you point me to any quick and dirty guaranteed algorithms
for this?  Quite possibly they may be exist somewhere in my Linux kernel source?
 
And just for giggles.  Suppose I return to discussing the server model that runs
a full language implementation ala Cold/LPC and possibly yours and Nathan's.

Any thoughts on multi-threading the language implementation?
What happens when the same objects method is called by a second thread?
Does this entail writing fully renterant and reusable code in the server 
language implementation?