I'm really happy to see this conversation.
On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 5:32 PM, Peter BrinkmannI'm still making the case here:
<peter.brinkmann@googlemail.com> wrote:
> I don't think users have anything to gain from fine-grained control of
> threads. That seems like an optimization hint that may or may not be
> helpful, depending on a lot of factors that are not obvious and will differ
> from machine to machine. In any case, I don't want to have to think about
> threads when patching any more than I want to think about, say, NEON
> optimizations.
Suppose you're writing a patch and you run up against the limitations
of a single-threaded process. Then, you take some portion in a
sub-patch and drop in a "thread~" object. You're able to selectively
add the functionality where it matters to you *and* only when you
actually need it.
The generalizable case is much more preferrable, I agree, but as you
say further on, you might develop an application that incurs
significant overhead--and may not be appropriate for all applications.