Concurrency

The Art of Organized Chaos

Concurrency is what allows your computer to listen to music, download a file, and move the mouse cursor all at the same time. It is the illusion of parallelism on a single core, and the power of true parallelism on multiple cores.

But with great power comes great responsibility. Without proper synchronization, concurrent programs are prone to Race Conditions, Deadlocks, and Starvation.

Chapter Roadmap

  1. Introduction to Concurrency: The Race Condition and the Critical Section.
  2. Locks and Synchronization: Hardware primitives (CAS) and Mutexes.
  3. Semaphores: The Producer-Consumer problem and Dijkstra’s invention.
  4. Deadlocks: The Deadly Embrace and how to avoid it.
  5. Monitors and Channels: Modern synchronization in Java and Go.

  6. Module Review: Flashcards and Cheat Sheet.

Concurrency

[!NOTE] This module explores the core principles of Concurrency, deriving solutions from first principles and hardware constraints to build world-class, production-ready expertise.

1. Interactive: The Need for Synchronization

Without coordination (Traffic Lights), independent agents (Cars) will eventually crash.

CRASH!

Module Chapters