[PEAK] I Can't Believe It's Not Threads(tm)!

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 08:13 AM 2/5/04 -0500, Ty Sarna wrote:
> > Another thought...  Agents.  It preserves the notion of an autonomous
> > thread of control (there's that pesky thread word again).
>
>I like Agents. Fits well with some of the discussed ares for expansion,
>such as using Agents for business rules, temporal rules, constraint
>validation, keeping Mr. Anderson in line, etc. ;-)
>
> > Forks.  Tendrils.  Flows.  Activities.  Threadlets.  Workers.  Filaments.
>
>I like Tendrils and Filaments.
>
>Forks is bad, because it doesn't.  Flows doesn't strike my fancy.
>Activities would be very confusing in our main system at work :-).
>Workers sounds like low-skill generic labor, as opposed to Agents, who
>have a specific mission.  Threadlets sounds like it's a more
>contained plug-in kind of thing with a real thread perhaps.
>
> >  Although, 'events.agented(function)' seems a little weird.
>
>and most of the other suggestions have the same issue (Tendrilized?

I Can't Believe It's Not Threads!  For that Tendrilized feeling!  :)


>Filamental?) Maybe the answer is events.asAgent(function)?

Ugh.  asAgent implies that you're making the function an agent, not that 
the function will spawn agents.  Continuing your Matrix references, I 
suppose it could be
events.Smith(function)...  :)  More seriously: perhaps we could use 
'events.agentmethod(function)'.

More in the threadlike line: Strands.  Of course, then you have 
'events.stranded()', which is also a bit odd.  Some items from the thesaurus:

cord, fibril, filament, hair, nap, pile, shred, spirit, staple, string, 
strip, tendril, tissue, tooth, vein, warp, web, woof

cable, filament, rope, strand, string, thread, wire

"Shred" sort of sounds like "Thread", although 'events.shredded(function)' 
sounds like you're deleting the function for security.  Spirit has a sense 
of agency to it, and 'events.spirited(function)' at least sounds upbeat.  :)

Still another possibility: NThread, as in short for nanothread, but also 
for not-a-thread.  :)  Or maybe XThread or ThreadX to be cool, or ZThread 
to confuse people into thinking it's something to do with Zope.  EThread 
for Event thread.  Of the lettered variants, EThread seems easiest to 
pronounce and has the most justification for its name.  I tend to think of 
events.Thread objects as "event threads" a lot of the time anyway.