Re: Blocking message passing for Workers

On Aug 9, 2014 10:16 AM, "David Bruant" <bruant.d@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Le 09/08/2014 15:51, Alan deLespinasse a écrit :
>
>> Thanks. Apparently I did a lousy job of searching for previous
discussions.
>>
>> I just found this later, longer thread:
>>
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2011OctDec/0965.html
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2012JanMar/0678.html
>> (same thread, different year, so they're not linked)
>>
>> Has anything changed since that thread? It seems like the discussion
stalled in early 2012. But I'm glad to find that other people want the same
thing.
>
> This topic is on people minds [1]. My understanding of where we're at is
that "ECMAScript 7" will bring syntax (async/await keywords [2]) that looks
like sync syntax, but acts asynchronously. This should eliminate the need
for web devs for blocking message passing primitives for workers.
>
> There is still a case for blocking primitives for projects that compile
from other languages (C, C++, Python, Java, C#, etc.) to JS [3].
>

I'm glad to be switching last night's twitter discussion to a bigger
medium.  My question here is: what is the proposal (if there is any) to
balance these and simultaneously ensure that we don't wind up limiting
ourselves or providing really bad foot guns or two APIs depending on
whether you're in the main thread or a worker?

> I personally hope it won't happen as it would be a step backwards.
Blocking communication (cross-thread/process/computer) was a mistake. We
need a culture shift. The browser and Node.js are a step in the right
direction (they did not initiate it, but helped popularize it).
>
> David
>
> [1] https://twitter.com/briankardell/status/497843660680351744
> [2] https://github.com/lukehoban/ecmascript-asyncawait#example
> [3] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=783190#c26
>