[Haskell-cafe] Python's big challenges, Haskell's big advantages?

Tony Finch dot at dotat.at
Wed Sep 17 13:47:46 EDT 2008


On Wed, 17 Sep 2008, Manlio Perillo wrote:
> Jefferson Heard ha scritto:
> >
> > the weight of a full unix process plus the weight of the python
> > interpreter in terms of memory,
>
> With copy on write some memory can be saved (if you preload all the required
> modules in the master process).

The kernel data structures and writable pages supporting an OS-level
process add up to dozens of KB whereas a language-level concurrent
context should require about 1KB.

> > context switching times,
>
> That's probabily the same as thread switching time.

Competent language-level concurrency support (as in Haskell and Erlang)
makes a context switch about as expensive as a function call, thousands of
times faster than an OS-level process switch.

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  <dot at dotat.at>  http://dotat.at/
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