On Mar 8, 2025, at 6:05 PM, Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:

I was at PARC in 1984, working with Dan Ingalls. I mentioned I was surprised that Smalltalk had no concurrency†, that the UI (let alone the system) was completely single-threaded. Only the window with focus could execute any code. Dan being Dan, he immediately got to work making a form of concurrency happen, followed by a delightful orgy of researches playing with the new toy. I loved it.

Because: sometimes in isolation you miss important things going on in the outside world.

Surely they must've read papers on concurrency & were aware of CSP, monitors, the Actor model etc?

A few years ago at a dinner I had asked Don Knuth whether he was going to write any books on parallel algorithms. Alas, I don't recall his exact answer but he didn't seem keen on the idea -- I was a bit surprised but thinking more about it, it made sense. [Still would like to see someone attempt a Knuth style encyclopedic treatment to the subject of concurrent/parallel algorithms!]