[MUD-Dev] New to MUD Dev, need friendly advice!

[Eric Merritt]

[shren <shren at io.com>]

> Mutexes and the like are not simple tools to use.  I have my first
> multithreaded code that I ever wrote.  I wrote it merely by
> looking up what the functions did - I hadn't yet had any class or
> formal training with multiprocessing.  The code is, by and large,
> horrible.  It took a design class and a bunch of code writing to
> finally start doing threads and processes right.
 
I would say that the difficulty in using multiple processes is in
the language not in the use of multiple processes it self. Take a
look at Erlang, this is a language in which you can literally have a
100,000+ processes running at the same time. Granted, they are vm
processes and not kernel processes, but in this instance you are
using them to structure your program not for any speed benefit so
that doesn't matter. Even in Oz (which uses a different threading
mechanism then Erlang) its pretty simple to use processes freely.
 
> If someone just wants to write a mud for the fun of writing a mud,
> then there's no reason to use threads when you can do without,
> especially if you don't already know the ends and outs of
> multiprocessing.

Better yet use the right tool for the job. If you want to use
multiple processes use a concurrent language, if you want blazing
speed use a fast language, if you want passible functions,
continuations, etc use a functional language.
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