Parallel Programming For the Arduino

blackbearnh writes "As more non-traditional programmers start playing around with embedded platforms like the Arduino, the limitations and complications of interrupt-driven event handling can become an annoying barrier to entry. Now a group of academics have ported the parallel-processing language Occam to the Arduino. In an interview on O'Reilly Answers, Matt Jadud of Allegheny College describes how Occam helps artists using the Arduino in their installations, and how the advent of low-cost computing platforms is changing the educational experience for proto-makers in school. 'Basically, an artist or a tinkerer or a hacker has a goal. They don't really care about learning Occam. They don't care about how this language is different from C. They just want to make a cat door that keeps their cat out when the cat comes back with a mouse. Or they want to make some kind of installation piece. Trying to focus as much on the user and the possible goals they might have is what's motivating our work right now.'"

Comments

Re:That kind of thinking...

[Trepidity]

Next up I suppose you're going to complain about how Legos don't force you to learn proper civil engineering before building things?

"simple" threading

[weston]

just implement simple threading

Sure, and they could just learn to fly too, instead of relying on some convenient form of transportation that solves the problem for them.

Threads are the famed "simple, clean and wrong" general solution to parallel programming tasks. The *concept* and *implementation* of threads can be simple, sure, but if you're working on anything other than simple problems, the trouble of keeping track of everything that's going on can become very challenging very quickly.

a whole other language just for one problem.

It's a big problem. Learning another language is generally a smaller problem. Particularly if you're the kind of Real Programmer(TM) that we're probably going to hear can manage with threads just fine.