Lambda the Ultimate

hello,

i'd like to find out about the differences between erlang processes and pthreads threads -- not in terms of the use of them but in what they actually are -- what the process and thread consists of -- how processes and threads differ and what those differences mean/amount to. i know an erlang process is much more economical (probably in both memory and cpu use) than a thread -- what is it that threads have and processes don't? stacks? each thread has a stack of it's own i think; do processes not? -- those are the kind of differences i'd like to find out about -- where can i read about this kind of thing? i notice there's a c project called "Protothreads: lightweight, stackless threads in C" ( http://www.sics.se/~adam/pt/index.html ) -- how similar to a process is one of these protothreads do you think (if you happen to know anything about protothreads)?

any info on this would be great.

thanks, ben.

(I'm not affiliated with them in any way.)

The Meta Programming System from JetBrains:

"MPS is an implementation of Language Oriented Programming, whose goal is to make defining languages as natural and easy as defining classes and methods is today. The purpose is to "raise the level of abstraction", which has been a major goal of programming since the first assembly language was born. MPS uses a variety of techniques, especially generative programming, to achieve this. With the freedom to program at a higher level, programmers can increase productivity, reduce errors, and adapt to changes more quickly.

The MPS project is still currently in the research phase, and could benefit greatly from open review and comments from anyone interested."

I dunno if this is snake-oil, but I've heard good things about the other tools they have released (IntelliJ, Resharper).