Proposal: Control.Concurrent.Async

[Simon Marlow]

On 14/06/2012 22:54, Lauri Alanko wrote:
> Quoting "Simon Marlow" <marlowsd at gmail.com>:
>> Naming is obviously up for discussion too.
>
> I feel that "Async" is a bit too generic and doesn't very precisely
> characterize this particular construct. How about "Future", as similar
> things are called in e.g. Alice
> <http://www.ps.uni-saarland.de/alice/manual/futures.html> and Java
> <http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/FutureTask.html>?

"Future" evokes notions of parallelism for me, rather than concurrency. 
  I think the term is more often used in a parallel setting.

There's a precedent for using 'async' for concurrency: see the new C# 
and F# async extensions:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh191443%28v=vs.110%29.aspx

But naming is hard, and if everyone wanted to use "future" instead I 
wouldn't object very strongly.

Cheers,
	Simon