Coordinated Concurrent Programming in Syndicate

Most programs interact with the world: via graphical user interfaces, networks, etc. This form of interactivity entails concurrency, and concurrent program components must coordinate their computations. This paper presents Syndicate, a novel design for a coordinated, concurrent programming language. Each concurrent component in Syndicate is a functional actor that participates in scoped conversations. The medium of conversation arranges for message exchanges and coordinates access to common knowledge. As such, Syndicate occupies a novel point in this design space, halfway between actors and threads. 1 From Interaction to Concurrency and Coordination Most programs must interact with their context. Interactions often start as reactions to external events, such as a user’s gesture or the arrival of a message. Because nobody coordinates the multitude of external events, a program must notice and react to events in a concurrent manner. Thus, a sequential program must de-multiplex the sequ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2016
• Where: ESOP
• Authors: Tony Garnock-Jones, Matthias Felleisen
• Keywords: ESOP 2016, Programming Languages