[fpc-devel] Parallel Computing

[Michael Schnell]

> I kind-of understand that... Borland tried to encapsulate the whole
> threading thing in a  TThread class.  It made it easier and every bit
> helps!  
Agreed.

But while the current implementation is absolutely appropriate for many 
tasks, it _could_ be a lot more usable if in many other cases when using 
a different paradigm.

TThreads don't have an event queue and thus while in the main thread you 
do "event driven programming" (doing multiple "run to completion" code 
snippets that are fired by certain events), while the TThreads only can 
run as a  "one shot" or in a cycle. Giving each thread an event queue 
could make the thread programming more transparent to the "average" 
programmer, as the same paradigm could be used in the main thread and 
the "worker threads"

An even more advanced way would be combining the paradigms of event 
driven programming and threaded projects by introducing "thread events". 
I.e. when an event is fired, it can use an additional thread (and thus 
an additional CPU) instead of running as a subroutine of the code that 
fires the event.

-Michael