Concurrency Fundamentals

Master multi-threading, synchronization, race conditions, and concurrent data structures.

90 minutes

6Detailed Sections

Senior Level

Concurrency allows multiple tasks to execute simultaneously (truly parallel on multi-core or interleaved on single-core).

Essential for: responsive applications (UI threads don't block), handling multiple clients (web server per-client thread), and utilizing multi-core CPUs.

Why it's hard: race conditions (multiple threads modify shared data), deadlocks (threads wait forever on locks), memory visibility (changes not seen by other threads), and data corruption (non-atomic updates).

Understanding threads, locks, atomics, and concurrent collections is crucial for building reliable systems. Modern alternatives (async/await, goroutines) reduce complexity but don't eliminate it.

Key Takeaways

Concurrency: Multiple tasks execute simultaneously

Parallelism: True simultaneous execution on multiple cores

Necessity: Responsive UX, multiple clients, multi-core utilization

Race condition: Multiple threads modify shared data unpredictably

Deadlock: Threads wait forever on locks

Memory visibility: Changes not seen by other threads

Data corruption: Non-atomic updates cause incorrect results

Testing: Concurrent bugs non-deterministic, hard to reproduce

Visual Diagram

Single-threaded (sequential) vs Multi-threaded (parallel): Throughput increases, complexity increases

All Tutorials Practice Questions

Concurrency Fundamentals

Table of Contents

Concurrency: Why It Matters and Why It's Hard

Key Takeaways

Visual Diagram

Race Conditions: The Core Problem

Locks and Synchronization: Protecting Shared Data

Atomics and Memory Visibility: Hardware-Level Guarantees

Deadlocks: Circular Wait Problems

Concurrent Collections: Beyond Manual Synchronization