Sitting in a coffee shop and enjoying your coffee, you find your attention caught by a nearby group of programmers in a passionate discussion of concurrency. They’re throwing around terms like parallel computing, threads, and interprocess communication with ease, leaving you feeling a bit lost. But don’t worry; you’re not alone.
If you’ve ever been to an orchestra concert, you know the beauty of multiple musicians playing different instruments and melodies all at once. It’s a beautiful chaos that somehow comes together to create an incredible performance. This chaos is much like concurrency: the idea of having multiple processes or threads running simultaneously to achieve a common goal.
In Chapters 1 through 5, you learn the fundamentals of concurrency, how computers work, and the different types of concurrency primitives. We explore sequential and parallel computing, delve into the hardware and software components that enable concurrency, and examine the various types of interprocess communication that allow multiple processes to work together seamlessly.
So, grab a latte and join the conversation—I promise it’ll be worth it.