Things UNIX can do atomically —
Insanely useful when you’re trying to avoid thread and process synchronization primitives — mutexes, flock, etc. — in concurrent code, which should basically be always. Rack::Cache’s file stores use some of these techniques to allow multiple backends to work against the same filesystem without file locks or a separate central writing process.
rcrowley.org
03:56
Threaded Awesome —
Joe Damato and Aman Gupta show why and how Ruby (MRI)’s thread implementation sucks. Great presentation with lots of useful examples of using tools like strace and gdb to figure out where a process is spending time. Warning: you will be depressed and embarrassed after reading this if you currently target Ruby MRI.
timetobleed.com
06:16
Why Events Are A Bad Idea (for high-concurrency servers) —
I want to believe!
usenix.org
02:26
timetobleed.com
15:45
Fibers implemented for Ruby 1.8.{6,7} —
Aman Gupta and Joe Damato have implemented Fibers for the 1.8.6 and 1.8.7 MRIs. They’re patches now but will hopefully go into a 1.8.8 release. I had a chance to see these guys give a quick talk on their work at a local Ruby meetup — it was a hit.
timetobleed.com
15:04