Hi all,
In case anyone is interested, Martin Odersky ("Mr Scala") has just started an online course in reactive programming. ÂThe underlying motivations behind this are quite similar to those that make CPA and CSP a compelling technique. ÂNotably, avoiding shared mutable state is quite clearly a common motivation. This and a few other aspects would be familiar to people starting out with Occam and Transputers 30 years ago.
However, the course will diverge rapidly from the Occam/CSP model in specific details. In particular, it is concerned with advanced functional programming in Scala. Also, the emphasis is very much on the actor model, which is a purely asynchronous / non-blocking model. ÂDue to the limitations of the JVM, the blocking of threads limits scalability and this is (incorrectly) asserted to be always evil. ÂThe actor model enshrines this to make such things as a tight control loop much more tricky.
Should be a fun course.