[fsantanna]

Yes, the problem on how to handle events in soft real-time applications with concurrent activities that affect each other. We initially targeted constrained embedded systems and came with the following design decisions:

- Safe and seamless integration with C (everything in ES uses C). Approach: source-to-source compiler + finalization mechanisms.

- Allow shared memory concurrency (typical in ES with I/O ports and low-level manipulation). Approach: synchronous concurrency + full determinism.

- Small overhead (we target 8-bit micro-controllers). Approach: single-threaded implementation, lexical memory management (no GC).

After investigating the synchronous languages from the '80s (Esterel, Lustre, Signal), we came to the conclusion that we wanted something in the line of Esterel.

The thesis and papers [1] discuss the design decisions in extent.

[1]: http://www.ceu-lang.org/chico/#ceu