What are the so-called "levels" of understanding multithreading?

Posted by Dan Tao on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Dan Tao
Published on 2011-02-03T21:40:17Z Indexed on 2011/02/03 23:34 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 294

Filed under:

multi-threading

I seem to remember reading somewhere some list of 4 "levels" of understanding multithreading. This may have been in a formal publication, or it may have been in an extremely informal context (even like in a Stack Overflow question, for example). Unfortunately I don't remember who referred to them or precisely what they were.

I seem to recall that they were roughly like:

Total ignorance
Awareness mixed with incompetence
Relative competence mixed with fear
True understanding

My intention is to refer to these levels in a blog post I'm writing, with a reference; but I can't for the life of me remember where I first encountered this list. Brief Google searches have proved unfruitful.

Related posts about multi-threading

what are the difficulties of operating system multithreading?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am reading a book that compares two ways of implementing threads, Middleware Threads and OS Threads. I have a question about these sentences: "A difficulty of operating system multithreading, however, is performance overhead. Since it is the operating system that is involved in switching threads… >>> More
Multithreading recommendation based on program description

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I would like to describe some specifics of my program and get feedback on what the best multithreading model to use would be most applicable. I've spent a lot of time now reading on ThreadPool, Threads, Producer/Consumer, etc. and have yet to come to solid conclusions. I have a list of files (all… >>> More
Multi-Threading - Cleanup strategy at program end

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
What is the best way to finish a multi-threaded application in a clean way? I am starting several socket connections from the main thread in seperate sockets and wait until the end of my business day in the main thread and use currently System.Environment.Exit(0) to terminate it. This leads to an… >>> More
Basic Java Multi-Threading Question

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
When an object is instantiated in Java, is it bound to the thread that instantiated in? Because when I anonymously implement an interface in one thread, and pass it to another thread to be run, all of its methods are run in the original thread. If they are bound to their creation thread, is there… >>> More
Multi-Threading in .NET

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi all.. I wrote this program, that is supposed to read about 5000 email address and send an pre-defined html mail. I am using the background worker component. The problem is this: I have wired up the method who is supposed to send the mail. But I am calling another method that is supposed to append… >>> More

Developer IT