ProcessJ: A Possible Future of Process-Oriented Design

摘要

We propose ProcessJ as a new, more contemporary programming language that supports process-oriented design, which raises the level of abstraction and lowers the barrier of entry for parallel and concurrent programming. ProcessJ promises verifiability (e.g., deadlock detection), based on Hoare's CSP model of concurrency, and existing model checkers like FDR. Process-oriented means processes compose, unlike thread-based or asynchronous message-passing models of concurrency; this means that programmers can incrementally define larger and larger concurrent processes without concern for undesirable nondeterminism or unexpected side effects. Processes at their lowest, most granular level are sequential programs; there are no global variables, so no race conditions, and the rules of parallel composition are functional in nature, not imperative, and based on the mathematically sound CSP process algebra. Collectively, these ideas raise the level of abstraction for concurrency; they were successful once before with the Occam language and the Transputer. We believe their time has come again, and will not go away, in this new age of multi-core processors. Computers have finally caught up with CSP and process-oriented design. We believe that ProcessJ can be the programming language that provides a bridge from today's languages to tomorrow's concurrent programs. Learning or teaching the programming model and language will be greatly supported through the educational part of the proposed project, which includes course templates and an online teaching tool that integrates in-browser programming with teaching material. Our efforts are encouraged by the forthcoming 2013 IEEE and ACM curricula guidelines, which for the first time include concurrent programming as a core knowledge area at the undergraduate level.