Hi!
On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 2:05 AM, Bas van Dijk
The assumption being that Mitar's Nerves are scarce resources (like files for example). Meaning:
Yes. My nerves are really a scarce resource. ;-) And I haven't yet heard anybody comparing them to files. I heard that they are short and sometimes people step on some of them. But not that they are like files. ;-) I have to tell this to my fellow neuroscientists. This is a whole new paradigm. ;-) But yes, Nerves were modeled by looking at file handles. And were also made so that they fit nicely into the "bracket" function. They are mostly a wrapper around scarce resource (like display, complex computation (CPU), sensors and similar). This is why there has to be some preparation and cleanup. In fact your approach opens a whole new idea for me. Because currently my whole main program was: attach everything together, if error while attaching cleanup and exit wait until everything lives/works or until an error cleanup everything and wait until everything is really cleaned up exit The whole main program just prepares my generic data-flow computation framework I am developing. So that attaching is how all flows (called Nerves) are interconnected and then you let it live and process. So your approach is interesting because I could do cleanup at one place, and it wouldn't matter if I am doing this in the "attach" phase (which this thread is about) or any other phase.
someOperation :: LiveNeuron n -> IO ()
(I'm not sure Mitar actually has this...)
No. In fact Neurons are defined with an operation they do. You just feed them with data and they output data. In main program you do not do operations over them. You just grow/prepare them and attache/interconnect them.
4) It's important not to leave handles open (or in this case leave nerves attached) when they don't need to be. In the case of files when you leave a file open when you're not using it anymore, other processes may not be able to use the file.
(I'm not sure this is a requirement for Nerves...)
It is. Because they encapsulate also complex resources like sensors, cameras, displays, keyboard and similar things. (But they can also be quite low-level too.)
(Again, I'm not sure a similar requirement exists for LiveNeurons)
It does. Once things are cleaned up there should be no other use of them. Mitar