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#1 2008-11-19 10:27:09

s_federici
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-12-18
Posts: 500+

Granularity of concurrency

What is the level of granularity of Scratch's concurrency? I mean, if I check in a IF block for a global variable having a given value and then I change its value accordingly inside the IF block, can I be sure that no other sprite is changing the value of the same variable at the same time?

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#2 2008-11-19 11:03:47

Jens
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-06-04
Posts: 1000+

Re: Granularity of concurrency

Ah, excellent question, s_federici! The beauty about the Scratch execution engine is, that - yes - even though Scratch is full of race conditions, you can be sure that they don't affect your conditionals.


Jens Mönig

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#3 2008-11-19 11:20:00

s_federici
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-12-18
Posts: 500+

Re: Granularity of concurrency

Thanks a lot Jens, I was sure that you could answer this question. BTW, I asked some question to the team (e.g. why the applet source code has not been made available as open source?) but I'm not getting any answer from them. Do you know if this is a Scratch team policy?

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#4 2008-11-19 12:14:19

Jens
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-06-04
Posts: 1000+

Re: Granularity of concurrency

s_federici, I'm sorry you didn't get answers to your questions. I don't think it's Scratch Team policy not to answer, but rather lack of time. I don't know about licensing and open source strategies, but I strongly suspect that again lack of time has a much to do with it. The Scratch Team, after all, is very small, and most of them are graduate students rather than full-time employees. I remember reading somewhere in the forums, though, that the binary license for the Scratch application is about to be changed to exclude the noncommercial clause, but then, that's probably not what you're interested in  smile


Jens Mönig

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#5 2008-11-19 16:52:54

chalkmarrow
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-05-18
Posts: 100+

Re: Granularity of concurrency

btw, i think "granularity of concurrency" is the name of the next james bond movie  smile

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#6 2008-11-20 07:07:42

Jens
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-06-04
Posts: 1000+

Re: Granularity of concurrency

wait! wasn't it a novel by Douglas Adams?  smile


Jens Mönig

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#7 2008-11-20 18:07:53

s_federici
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-12-18
Posts: 500+

Re: Granularity of concurrency

I do love Douglas Adams!  big_smile  Should I sell him the title?

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#8 2008-11-21 02:58:10

Jens
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-06-04
Posts: 1000+

Re: Granularity of concurrency

Haha, Douglas Adams rocks, but I'm afraid he passed away...


Jens Mönig

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#9 2008-11-21 11:14:02

s_federici
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-12-18
Posts: 500+

Re: Granularity of concurrency

Really!?!? I'm shocked. I had hoped that other babel fishes could made my reading days so light and fun in the future...

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#10 2008-11-22 18:08:53

Jens
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-06-04
Posts: 1000+

Re: Granularity of concurrency

you can still commemorate the great man on Towel Day (May 25), which btw would make for a nice project and logo competition.


Jens Mönig

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