Parallel Python or Ruby?

Keep in mind that Python 2.6 already has the new multiprocessing package, which presents a simple interface for multiprocess computation.<p>I'd like to poke around with Python's compiler module and look at the AST--you could enforce that a certain class of functions have no side effects, and then spawn multiple processes to execute them semi magically.<p>Futures like the ones in IO (<a href="http://www.iolanguage.com/scm/git/checkout/Io/docs/IoGuide.html#Concurrency-Futures" rel="nofollow">http://www.iolanguage.com/scm/git/checkout/Io/docs/IoGuide.h...</a>) always struck me as a pretty cool way to abstract away synchronization problems. Using the multiprocess stuff as a background would be fun.

One change to ruby that would be useful, would be to make Enumerable.collect run in parallel.<p>There's probably a whole bunch of other Enumerable methods that could be made to run in parallel as well.

If you use Coro with Perl, you can say something like:<p><pre><code> async { do_something; cede; do_something; } do_something_else; cede; </code></pre> See <a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/Coro/Coro.pm" rel="nofollow">http://search.cpan.org/dist/Coro/Coro.pm</a> for more information.<p>[Edit: If you want to see a continuation-based web framework built with Coro, look at Continuity: <a href="http://search.cpan.org/~awwaiid/Continuity-0.994/lib/Continuity.pm" rel="nofollow">http://search.cpan.org/~awwaiid/Continuity-0.994/lib/Continu...</a><p>It's very cool.]

Hello randomhack,<p>Have you heard of Stackless Python? That might be what you are looking for. <a href="http://www.stackless.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.stackless.com/</a>

Do we have here a solution looking for a problem?

Haven't you heard about the egregious buffer overflow vulnerabilities found recently in Ruby? Not a good idea to use it for anything serious in light of those, IMO.