Fare's response on threads

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr]

I think that Lynn is reading too much into phrases such as "reflection"
and "you can tell the system that, if you wish".

Let's start with the latter, since it was the original topic of this
thread (no pun intended or achieved). To me, it simply means that this
design allows you (the "application programmer") to specify something or
else choose the default (as specified by the "system programmer",
another human).

Think of type declarations, for example. Many languages have them, some
don't. You can think of a design where you can declare the type of a
variable or not. If you don't, it will still work but perhaps not as
well as if you had made the declaration. Same thing for threads - you
might have an automatic parallelization system that can be manually
overridden for better results.

As for "reflection", we don't mean anything very deep by it. Only that
the system includes a model of its own inner operation and can change
that operation. We are not worried about intelligence or
conscienceness. Only about having low level "knobs" in our design so it
can better adapt itself to different operating conditions.

-- Jecel