January 23rd, 2002



Today, Lori and I went down to have lunch at Si Senor.

There was another group of casually-dressed white collar co-workers there--it turned out that they were from Print Cafe, in the Strip.

While we ate, one of the Print Cafe guys was talking about the problems of synchronization with multi-threading. He couldn't remember the word "atomic" and was using "autonomous" instead, and I found myself really wanting to interrupt "helpfully" and suggest the correct word. But I didn't.

All through lunch, though, I listened to him talking about workarounds for the fact that their language didn't have any synchronization. And I was quietly thinking to myself, "You are so doomed."

At the end of lunch, as they were getting up to leave, I did pipe up to ask what language they were using. They said that they were using JavaScript, and yes it didn't have any synchronization primitives. They'd started with a much simpler system, and it had mushroomed to the point that threading had become a problem. I sympathized; I had had that experience with Tcl/Tk at one point.

I wish them well, but I still think they're up a creek.