Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

August 21, 2014

The Little Book of Semaphores

Filed under: Concurrent Programming — Patrick Durusau @ 2:33 pm

The Little Book of Semaphores by Allen Downey.

From the webpage:

The Little Book of Semaphores is a free (in both senses of the word) textbook that introduces the principles of synchronization for concurrent programming.

In most computer science curricula, synchronization is a module in an Operating Systems class. OS textbooks present a standard set of problems with a standard set of solutions, but most students don’t get a good understanding of the material or the ability to solve similar problems.

The approach of this book is to identify patterns that are useful for a variety of synchronization problems and then show how they can be assembled into solutions. After each problem, the book offers a hint before showing a solution, giving students a better chance of discovering solutions on their own.

The book covers the classical problems, including “Readers-writers,” “Producer-consumer”, and “Dining Philosophers.” In addition, it collects a number of not-so-classical problems, some written by the author and some by other teachers and textbook writers. Readers are invited to create and submit new problems.

If you want a deep understanding of concurrency, this looks like a very good place to start!

Some of the more colorful problem names:

  • The dining savages problem
  • The Santa Claus problem
  • The unisex bathroom problem
  • The Senate Bus problem

There are problems (and patterns) for your discovery and enjoyment!

I first saw this in a tweet by Computer Science.

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