09:41 <notsgnik> Hello Pony community, I'm learning pony language and I'm almost done, I'm yet still struggling with how a beaviour will report that the duty is done to the main actor

09:43 <notsgnik> if anyone has a bit of time to explain me in private, he would be a helpfully kind person :)

09:53 <SeanTAllen> notsgnik: what do you mean "report that the duty is done to the main actor"? behaviors dont report they are done. they are asynchronous.

09:59 <notsgnik> well if i can pass a pointer to something that will be checked periodically by the main actor he can report that he is done and concurency is not an issue

10:01 <SeanTAllen> i dont understand

10:01 <SeanTAllen> i think you are making some assumptions

10:01 <SeanTAllen> but im not sure what they are

10:01 <SeanTAllen> what is it that you imagine in happening that requires this to be done?

10:02 <notsgnik> i have a two dimensional array containing zeros that is part of a class

10:03 <notsgnik> then i have actor containing a behavior that will turn them into ones

10:04 <notsgnik> the class will figure out the size of the array and run multiple behaviors on it

10:05 <notsgnik> while calling them the class should give them a pointer to an array where they should put a 1 to the offset corresponding

10:06 <notsgnik> this array will be checked periodicaly to find out if all beaviours have been executed

10:13 <SeanTAllen> sorry, i'm not really following

10:13 <SeanTAllen> are you asking how you can know when asynchronous work is done?

10:13 <notsgnik> yep

10:22 <SeanTAllen> ok

10:22 <SeanTAllen> so

10:22 <SeanTAllen> moving backwards for a moment

10:23 <notsgnik> :)

10:23 <SeanTAllen> is there a fixed numbers of behaviors that need to be run?

10:23 <notsgnik> yes

10:23 <SeanTAllen> so in that situation, i normally create some sort of "supervising actor"

10:24 <SeanTAllen> it dispatches out the work and as each actor finishes the work it needs to do, it reports back with the finished work

10:24 <SeanTAllen> the supervising actor knows how many it is waiting to hear from, it keeps track of which have completed and when all are completed, its kicks off the next step

10:24 <SeanTAllen> so the supervising actor is the only one mutating a data structure that represents completed work

10:25 <notsgnik> how do they report thne?

10:25 <SeanTAllen> "they" is actors doing "work"?

10:25 <notsgnik> yep

10:26 <notsgnik> they need a pointer to something or a signal, don't they ?

10:27 <SeanTAllen> you dont have pointers in pony

10:28 <SeanTAllen> you can have a tag reference to an actor

10:28 <SeanTAllen> hold on

10:28 <SeanTAllen> doing a really simplified example

10:31 <SeanTAllen> here you go notsgnik: https://playground.ponylang.org/?gist=1b8684fef6a856fcebbf3528f05214cd

10:32 <SeanTAllen> thats a really simple version of the basic pattern

10:32 <SeanTAllen> that you can enhance to have more than 1 worker

10:34 <notsgnik> thanks a lot SeanTAllen, you are cool :D i'll check that right away :)

10:35 <SeanTAllen> you're welcome notsgnik

10:37 <notsgnik> thanks i've understand now

10:37 <notsgnik> i'll play with this , pony is really a cool language :D

10:54 <SeanTAllen> glad that was helpful notsgnik

10:54 <SeanTAllen> happy Ponying!

15:25 <codec_> Hi

15:26 <dlowe> Hi, codec_

15:27 <codec_> quick question, can an actor ask to run the garbage collector for itself?

15:28 <Praetonus> codec_: Yes, see the `pony_triggergc` function in pony.h

15:29 <Praetonus> You'll have to call it through the FFI

15:30 <codec_> nice! by the way do you happen to know if an actor can ask to have a preemptive threading model?

15:32 <codec_> with optionally a way to run the gc if the actor "is preemtep"?

15:33 <Praetonus> There is no preemtive scheduling in the runtime, so that won't be possible

15:35 <codec_> is it possible that it can be added?

16:05 <mgartner> Hello, I'm wondering why Pony does not error during compilation when a function is over-typed. For example, when the return type of the function is (U64 | String) but only a U64 can ever be returned, Pony does not error, and it seems like it should. Here's an example: https://gist.github.com/mgartner/be3a3e0d2102a6b7fe35c7d7df92a5e9

19:04 <SeanTAllen> codec_ its under discussion

19:37 <SeanTAllen> mgartner: that would be an interesting RFC. would need to account for interfaces and traits default methods.