Debugging in an Asynchronous World

[Ulf Wiger]

On Sun, 08 Feb 2004 23:44:41 +0100, Marc van Woerkom 
<marc.vanwoerkom@REDACTED> wrote:

> I would lvoe to hear an Erlang point of view comment on this article:
>
>    Debugging in an Asynchronous World
>    Michael Donat, Silicon Chalk
>
>    Hard-to-track bugs can emerge when you can't guarantee sequential  
>    execution. The right tools and the right techniques can help.
>
>    http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=63


Well, what they describe is your typical pthreads hell or nightmares
that come from trying to solve concurrency problems with inadequate
tools, like e.g. UML tools.

They have all sorts of problems determining global sequences of events.
No wonder -- we don't even try, but rather try to build systems out
of loosely coupled components, using appropriate techniques to try
to isolate behaviours as much as possible.

In my plain_fsm package (there I go again...), I wrote a little
comparison between programming models, paying special attention
to the number of timing dependencies introduced solely due to the
choice of programming model:

http://www.wiger.net/uffe/erlang/plain_fsm0.4/doc/pots/index.html

/Uffe
-- 
Ulf Wiger