Release It!

4.5 Blocked Threads

Interpreted languages such as Java and Ruby almost never really crash. Sure, they get application errors, but it’s relatively rare to see the interpreter or virtual machine crash. I still remember when a rogue pointer in C could reduce the whole machine to a navel-gazing heap. (Anyone else remember Amiga’s “Guru Meditation” errors?) Here’s the catch about interpreted languages, though. The interpreter can be running, and the application can still be totally deadlocked, doing nothing useful.

As often happens, adding complexity to solve one problem creates the risk of entirely new failure modes. Multithreading makes ...