Learning Java, 3rd Edition

Chapter 9. Threads

At the heart of designing computer systems and software lies the problem of managing time. We take for granted that modern computer systems such as desktop computers can manage many applications running concurrently and produce the effect that the software is running simultaneously. Of course we know that, for the most part, our single processor computers can do only one thing at a time. The magic is performed by sleight of hand in the operating system (OS), which juggles applications and turns its attention from one to the next so quickly that they appear to run at once.

In the old days, the unit of concurrency for such systems was the application or process. To the OS, a process was more or less a black box that decided what do to on its own. If an application required greater concurrency, it could get it only by running multiple processes and communicating between them, but this was a heavyweight approach and not very elegant. Later, the concept of threads was introduced. Threads provide fine-grained concurrency within a process, under the application’s own control. Threads have existed for a long time but have historically been tricky to use. In Java, support for threading is built into the language, making it easier to work with threads. In Java 5.0, a whole new set of utilities was introduced that address common patterns and practices in multithreaded applications and raise them to the level of tangible Java APIs. Collectively, this means that Java is a ...