Concurrency And Threading Principles

Concurrency and Threading Principles

1. Avoid Race Conditions

What is a race condition:

• Multiple threads access shared data concurrently
• At least one thread writes/modifies the data
• No synchronization mechanism in place
• Result depends on unpredictable thread execution timing

Prevention strategies:

• Synchronization: Locks, mutexes, semaphores
• Immutability: Immutable data is thread-safe by default
• Message passing: Send data between threads instead of sharing
• Thread-local storage: Each thread has its own copy

Detection:

• Go: Run with -race flag (race detector)
• Rust: Miri tool for undefined behavior detection
• C/C++: ThreadSanitizer (TSan)
• Java: JCStress, FindBugs

2. Prevent Deadlocks

What is a deadlock:

• Two or more threads waiting for each other indefinitely
• Example: Thread A holds Lock 1, waits for Lock 2; Thread B holds Lock 2, waits for Lock 1

Four conditions (ALL must be true for deadlock):

1. Mutual exclusion: Resources held exclusively (locks)
2. Hold and wait: Holding one resource while waiting for another
3. No preemption: Can't force unlock
4. Circular wait: A waits for B, B waits for A

Prevention (break any one condition):

• Lock ordering: Always acquire locks in same order
• Timeout: Use try_lock with timeout, back off and retry
• Avoid nested locks: Don't hold multiple locks simultaneously
• Use lock-free data structures when possible

3. Prefer Immutability

• Immutable data = thread-safe by default (no synchronization needed)
• Share immutable data freely between threads
• Use immutable data structures where possible (Rust default, functional languages)
• If data must change, use message passing instead of shared mutable state

4. Message Passing Over Shared Memory

• "Don't communicate by sharing memory; share memory by communicating" (Go proverb)
• Send data through channels/queues instead of accessing shared memory
• Reduces need for locks and synchronization
• Easier to reason about and test

5. Graceful Degradation

• Handle concurrency errors gracefully (timeouts, retries, circuit breakers)
• Don't crash entire application on one thread failure
• Use supervisors/monitors for fault tolerance (Erlang/Elixir actor model)
• Implement backpressure for producer-consumer scenarios

Concurrency Models by Use Case

• I/O-bound: async/await, event loops, coroutines, green threads
• CPU-bound: OS threads, thread pools, parallel processing
• Actor model: Erlang/Elixir actors, Akka (message passing, isolated state)
• CSP (Communicating Sequential Processes): Go channels, Rust channels

Testing Concurrent Code

• Write unit tests with controlled concurrency (deterministic execution)
• Test timeout scenarios and resource exhaustion
• Test thread pool full, queue full scenarios

Related Principles

• Resource and Memory Management Principles @.claude/skills/resources-and-memory-management/SKILL.md
• Error Handling Principles @.claude/rules/error-handling-principles.md
• Testing Strategy @.claude/rules/testing-strategy.md