[Python-Dev] [PEP 3148] futures - execute computations asynchronously

[Guido van Rossum]

On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 12:18 PM,  <exarkun at twistedmatrix.com> wrote:
> The "explicit" futures on the wikipedia page seems to cover what is commonly
> referred to as a future.  For example, Java's futures look like this.
>
> The "implicit" futures are what is generally called a promise.  For example,
> E's promises look like this.

Fair enough, though the article confuses the matter by using the words
more or less interchangeably.

> Though the difference is mainly one of API, it turns out to make a
> significant difference in what you can accomplish.  Promises are much more
> amenable to the pipelining optimization, for example.  They're also much
> harder to implement in Python without core language changes.

That's why implicit futures (by any name) aren't on the table.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)