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0 pointslevodelellis7mo ago0 comments

From my understanding this talk describes how he implemented a solution for a similar problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvsvd67XUKw

I'm saying if you're not writing multi-threaded code everyday, use a library. It can use atomics/locks but you shouldn't use it directly. If the library is designed well it'd be impossible to deadlock.

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jstimpfle7mo ago· 2 in thread

If you take programming serious, learn it.

With a library that encapsulates a low number of patterns (like message passing) you'll be very limited. If you never start learning about lower level multi-threading issues you'll never learn it. And it's not _that_ hard.

I'm not writing multi threaded every day (by far), but often enough that I can write useful things (using shared memory, atomics, mutexes, condition variables, etc). And I'm looking forward to learn more, better understand various issues, learn new patterns.

levodelellisOP7mo ago

I do write code that uses multi-threading every day and usually I write a few lockless functions every month for the in-house library I use. I was considering writing an article on atomics after all the mistakes and bad code I've seen.

A problem with writing an article is that if I don't show real code, people might think I'm exaggerating; if I do show real code, it'd look like I'm calling someone a bad programmer

jstimpfle7mo ago

I've certainly seen my share of buggy multi-threaded programming. On the other hand, that's nothing compared to all the buggy and bad code I've seen overall. And I don't think it's going to get better by telling people not to even try.

I'm very doubtful that multi-threading can be abstracted behind a library. Simple message passing can cover a lot of use cases but not everything by far. I've also seen the Javascript model work fine, but it's not real multi-threading (no parallelism). As to async frameworks, they too are restrictive and they come with a lot of complexity.

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