<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;">On Mar 8, 2025, at 6:05 PM, Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:<br><div><blockquote type="cite"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div><meta charset="UTF-8"><div class="gmail_default" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><font face="arial, sans-serif">I was at PARC in 1984, working with Dan Ingalls. I mentioned I was surprised that Smalltalk had no concurrency<span style="font-variant-ligatures: no-common-ligatures;">†</span>, that the UI (let alone the system) was completely single-threaded. Only the window with focus could execute any code. Dan being Dan, he immediately got to work making a form of concurrency happen, followed by a delightful orgy of researches playing with the new toy. I loved it.</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><font face="arial, sans-serif">Because: sometimes in isolation you miss important things going on in the outside world.</font></div></div></blockquote><br></div><div>Surely they must've read papers on concurrency & were aware of CSP, monitors, the Actor model etc?</div><div><br></div><div>A few years ago at a dinner I had asked Don Knuth whether he was going to write any books on parallel algorithms. Alas, I don't recall his exact answer but he didn't seem keen on the idea -- I was a bit surprised but thinking more about it, it made sense. [Still would like to see someone attempt a Knuth style encyclopedic treatment to the subject of concurrent/parallel algorithms!]</div><br></body></html>