Client/server chat program

[Jonathan Gardner]

On Tuesday 11 December 2001 07:18 am, Paul Rubin wrote:
> The usual way to do this is use separate threads for reading input and
> displaying messages.

Errr... not necessarily. Note that this is a chat program - you'll want the 
seperate threads to work with each other. I find it easier to program this 
sort of thing with only one thread and one process that sees what can be done 
and does it without blocking. As a semi-experienced thread developer, I know 
that in the end, it's better to try and avoid threads whenever possible, 
unless they are almost completely independent of each other. (ie, in games, 
one thread to do the ai, one thread to do the rendering, one thread to do the 
game logic makes sense, because they don't really communicate with each 
other, except for when they start and when they end.)

Something like a web-server, where two HTTP connections don't have to know 
about each other - is perfect for giving each connection a thread or a 
process to call their own.

Jonathan