Re: Multithreading, again and again

[Tom Tromey]

>> Anyway, I think the single-thread event driven approach is better for
>> Emacs, like Node.js and other languages do.

Yes, maybe so, but I think there are two reasons concurrency is
desirable.

One reason is that, in practice, the current event-driven approach
sometimes falls down.  E.g., ERC can time out when something in Emacs
blocks too long.  These are bugs, and worse, won't be immediately fixed
by concurrency -- but at least could be, in the long run, in a permanent
way.

The other reason is that concurrency makes it easier to convert code to
run in the background, without a need for a drastic rewrite.  I think
Gnus is the prime candidate here -- make 'g' work in the background by
just inserting a (make-thread) at the appropriate juncture.  Rewriting
arbitrary code in the process-filter style is too much work, it seems to
me.

Tom