[zzzeek]

> The road to automatic parallelisation of sequential programs is littered with corpses. It can’t be done. (not quite true, in some specific circumstances it can, but this is by no means easy).

vs three paragraphs later

> Alexander’s talk gave us a glimpse of the future. His company concurix is showing us where the future leads. They have tools to automate the detection of sequential bottlenecks in Erlang code.

why is that not a contradiction? because an erlang program isn't "sequential" to start with?

[masklinn]

> why is that not a contradiction? because an erlang program isn't "sequential" to start with?

Yes. The point is that in a well-coded erlang program only bottlenecks should be sequential (and the bulk should be concurrent), the goal's tool would be (I haven't seen the presentation so I'm throwing ideas to the wall) to see what dependencies lead to sequences in the system reducing overall concurrency and leaving the developer to handle fixing this part if possible.

It doesn't try to automatically parallelize a sequential program, and it does not start from fully sequential programs in the first place.

(not saying I agree with Joe's assertions, they're quite inflammatory and at a very fundamental level lack solid evidence. I have to say I prefer his milder tone to this new "rha rha" one, though this one may yield more visibility for the language I fear the drama)

[jameskilton]

They're different statements. Taking a sequential program and automatically parallelizing it is a very hard problem. What this tool does, as I read it, is simply find sequential parts of code, and it's up to the devs to figure out how to parallelize said code.

[zem]

they aren't trying to automatically parallelise the program, they are just using the tool as a diagnostic aid to show where the sequential bottlenecks are, and where it would be most productive to rewrite that segment in a more parallel manner. think of it as a next-generation profiler.

[dustismo]

I think you missed the "automatic" part. Completely rewriting a program in a new language is certainly not automatic.

[zzzeek]

both phrases feature the term "automate"...but yes, one is detection, one is resolution