Re: Sending an interrupt to the frontend?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg127357] Re: Sending an interrupt to the frontend?
- From: Yves Klett <yves.klett at googlemail.com>
- Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2012 03:48:12 -0400 (EDT)
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Michael, the subjective stability changed brutally between versions 5 and 6 with the introduction of the whole dynamic frontend stuff. With version 6 and all the very desirable interactivity the number of kernel kills rocketed for me. If you use this heavily there are often hangs/crashes that seem difficult to reproduce. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Which can be quite vexing. Of course this may still be due to bad programming, but in a rather non-deterministic fashion. Regards, Yves Am 19.07.2012 09:51, schrieb Michael Weyrauch: > Ralph, > > I really would like to understand your critical remarks somewhat > better. > > It is clear that one can easily and quickly run the frontend irresponsive. > However, in most cases I know, this is actually due to bad programming > (from Mathematica's point of view) rather than an instable product. > > One typical reason is that a command returns symbolic results where the > programmer actually expected only numerical stuff, and quickly things get completely out of hand. But how should Mathematica know that all this was not intended? > > It is the tremendous flexibility and the many possibilities which > sometims get into the way, and as a consequence the frontend can not > handle the output from the kernel any more. > > I really do not understand where you expect Wolfram to get "its act > together". My experience tells me: A good Mathematica program may run > for days without any instability. But my stupitidy and/or lasy > programming can run it against > the wall within seconds. Mathematica as such is definitely not unstable. > (of course, sometimes there are bugs as with any other major (and minor) > software). > > Michael > > > Am 15.07.2012 10:28, schrieb Ralph Dratman: >> David, >> >> "Troublesome" puts the matter rather tactfully. >> >> Bluntly, there is no excuse for a major product to display such a >> level of instability in 2012. >> >> Since I personally like Mathematica so much, and because I use it >> constantly, I find the crashes to be both an embarrassment and a >> disappointment. >> >> I can only hope Wolfram Research will soon get its act together on >> this critically important issue. >> >> Ralph >> >> >> On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 1:28 AM, David Bailey <dave at removedbailey.co.uk> wrote: >>> On 12/07/2012 10:00, Yves Klett wrote: >>>> In earlier incarnations, the kernel would show up as a separate entry in >>>> the taskbar (on Win XP, that was), which made it very convenient to >>>> kill. I kind of miss that behaviour (when things go wrong repeatedly). >>> >>> I wrote a C program that executes the command >>> >>> c:\windows\System32\taskkill.exe /im MathKernel.exe /t /f >>> >>> This runs in the background all the time, and responds to a hot key! >>> >>> The fact that I took time to set this up, probably reflects just how >>> troublesome kernel hangs can be! >>> >>> Perhaps at the very least Mathematica could spawn a program of this type. >>> >>> David Bailey >>> http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk >>> >>> >> > >