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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.'"
Next up I suppose you're going to complain about how Legos don't force you to learn proper civil engineering before building things?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.
Tweet, tweet.
In my limitted experience, threads are one of the more difficult things for... people to understand. I find it difficult to describe their position, which I think Matt Jadud had a tough time too, (See how he said "an artist or a tinkerer or a hacker"). In my situation, I have a friend who is taking an engineering major at the local university. Now, a little background information; I don't know how it is in other cities across the world, but here, Engineering at the university is considered one of the hardest courses. You know, really ridiculously high drop out rates, cause most people can't handle it. Opening orientation, they say look to your left, look to your right. 2 out of the 3 of you won't make it past second year. So anyone who manages to make it through the first 2 years of Engineering gets this perception that they know to do stats as well as a stats major or know how to program as good as a programming major.
Anyways, so my buddy is in engineering, and he knows enough C++ to essentially do any calculation he wants through the command line. He hasn't had to work with GUI's or anything like that. The most he did was a turn based Star Trek game where the command prompt simply reprints the "game board" everytime you make a move or perform an attack, prompting the player what to do at the end of each turn.
So he tends to be the kind of user that they target with these kinds of ports. He's already loaded with a bunch of information in some other field. Be it engineering, arts, hacking, radio signals, whatever. They don't have a whole lot of time to run through the tutorials to learn threading and how its supposed to be done properly. There's no telling how long it'll be before they get into an issue with threading and they won't have enough knowledge on how to fix it and it'll be a big headache if they went and built their entire code that revolves around this segfault they created.
So thats where these other languages come in. They are similar enough to a common language like C that anyone who does a beginner course can pick them up. They offer the features that users WANT without all the complications that come with learning how its done.
I know, I know, teach a man to fish, right? But what if he only ever needs 1 fish in his entire lifetime?
The best option for people who want to learn about parallel programming on an embedded processor is the Parallax Propeller. Genuine 8 core system on a chip, programmed to the bare metal. And so much fun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_Propeller