Programming Windows®, Fifth Edition

Thread Synchronization

About once a year, the traffic lights at the busy intersection outside my apartment window stop working. The result is chaos, and while the cars usually avoid actually hitting each other, they often come close.

We might term the intersection of two roads a "critical section.” A southbound car and a westbound car cannot pass through an intersection at the same time without hitting each other. Depending on the traffic volume, different approaches are taken to solve the problem. For light traffic at an intersection with high visibility, drivers can be trusted to properly yield. More traffic might require a stop sign, and still heavier traffic would require traffic lights. The traffic lights help coordinate the activity of the ...