This is really neat! I'm always excited when academics propose a new data structure or algorithm and it ends up being deployed in the field. In this case, it looks like the main idea underlying the data structure is beautiful and simple.
I guess relative to other examples of academia -> deployed in field, that's relatively quick!
Using CSP (Communicating sequential processes) as an example of sometimes how long time it can take before academic ideas are actually developed: Initially CSP was described in 1978, but it wasn't until Golang (2009) and Clojure (2013) came around implementing it that the idea actually became popular.
Yeah, referring to the initial release of core.async (Clojure implementation of CSP) which seems to have been in late 2013 (https://github.com/clojure/core.async). Clojure usually ships new features as libraries rather than changing the core language, so both a feature and a library I guess.
