[gclist] Re: gclist-digest V3 #84

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

I brought up Erlang.
Scott Meyer <smeyer@us.oracle.com> wrote:

    The unglamorous way of saying this is: "You have just re-invented the
    process."
	
I have no idea what this means.  "Process" is a rather vague word.
The things Erlang calls processes are lightweight things, lighter weight
than Java threads and comparable to the QuickThreads library.  Processes
on a single (logical) node execute in a shared address space and don't
require any operating-system support for thread-switching.

However, it's an essential part of the Erlang process and message model
that sending messages to threads on other nodes is exactly the same as
sending messages other other threads on the same node.