ErlCee++

[Cedric Shock]

> Of course, we're now starting the debate about why messaging and private
> heap data in a concurrent environment is a better way to develop than
> the lets-share-everything-and-pray method used by most pthread
> programmers.
> 

This is something I've wondered about. If we don't have destructive 
assignment, then it should be possible to share a chunk of memory across 
a message, so that data that is mostly unchanged can be shared in common 
between processes with less risk. I assume this isn't done because of 
the difficulty in handling two different message passing systems for 
local and remote processes, and added complications in the garbage 
collection. It would be interesting to be able to share inmutable data 
structures between processes.

I just realized there is no need for this (or it has little aditional 
utility), as erlang term storage accomplishes essentialy the same thing.

--Cedric