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From: eugene@nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)
Newsgroups: comp.parallel
Subject: Re: [ENM: Original producer-consumer question]
Message-ID: <12957@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Date: 6 Feb 91 17:28:09 GMT
References: <12942@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Sender: fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu
Reply-To: eugene@wilbur.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)
Organization: NAS Program, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
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Approved: parallel@hubcap.clemson.edu

<Reference and quote to Harry Jordan removed for brevity>.
>Does anybody have any comments regarding this article ?
>Particularly, can we say that occam is a producer-initiated language
>and Fortran is a consumer-initiated language ?

I've not read the article, but it sounds interesting.  Harry is an
articulate fellow.  My problem comes with "consumer-initiated language" as
'consumer' can be taken two ways.  The ambiguity of natural
language makes this difficult for a 'naive' user to distinguish.
Comes with the producer-consumer terminology (jargon) in concurrent computing.
One can argue dataflow languages "sort of" fit this model, but in
a different framework.  One can ALSO argue that Fortran is used by
'consumers' and if the marketing types ever got ahold of this, we would
be in trouble. (Yes it's a semantic argument, but that's where the
misunderstanding lies.)

Jordan's article and the misquote on Sacrifice [8^)] reinforce
the Dec. Pancake and Bergmark paper.  Perhaps we should all
label our articles:
COMPUTATIONAL SCIENTIST or COMPUTER SCIENTIST
[by then we would argue the difference of those....]

I have to go find the article as my subscription to this has lapsed.

Summary: I am saying judging on the basis of this one quote is difficult.

--e. nobuo miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@orville.nas.nasa.gov
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  AMERICA: CHANGE IT OR LOSE IT.