[ralph]

Yep, the CSP style of channel communication is great. Those thinking Erlang is better than sliced bread need to make sure they're up on what came before and after; http://swtch.com/~rsc/thread/ Personally, I find Erlang to be too clunky as a language. Good for special purpose telephone switching software maybe, but for general programming the CSP style can be done in nicer ways than having to switch to a whole new language.

[jgrahamc]

Not often we hear about CSP here. I did my doctorate in it (Hoare was the head of department at the time). Are you using CSP for something real?

[ralph]

Not CSP, no, but libraries that bolt onto existing languages, e.g. C, Python. I'd love to see it become more of a mainstream technique in Python than `import threading', etc.

For those that wonder what we're wittering on about, visit http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/teaching/07/modules/CO/6/31/slides/ and read these PDF slides in this order.

    motivation.pdf -- just pages 1-39
    basics.pdf
    applying.pdf
    choice.pdf
    replicators.pdf
    protocol.pdf
    shared-etc.pdf

Ignore the crufty Occam (Transputer anyone?) syntax, just concentrate on the concepts. Although some of the PDFs seem to have many pages, often a page is the same as the previous with a minor change; they're slides!