I’m looking for a development job and see that many listings specify that the developers must be versed in multithreading. This appears both for Java job listings, and for C++ listings that involve ‘system programming’ on UNIX.
In the past few years I have been working with Java and using its various synchronization mechanisms.
In the late 90s I did a lot of C++ work, though very little threads. In college, however, we used threads on Solaris.
My question is whether there are significant differences in the issues that developers in C/C++ face compared to developers in Java, and whether any of the techniques to address them are fundamentally different. Java obviously includes some nicer mechanisms and synchronized versions of collections, etc.
If I want to refresh or relearn threading on UNIX, what’s the best approach? Which library should I look at? etc. Is there some great current tutorial on threads in c++?
The fundamental challenges of threading (e.g. synchronization, race conditions, inter-thread communication, resource cleanup), but Java makes thread much more manageable with garbage collection, exceptions, advanced synchronization objects, advanced debugging support with reflection.
With C++, you are much more likely to have memory corruption and ‘impossible’ race conditions. And you will need to write a lot more low-level thread primitives or rely on libraries (like boost) that are not part of the standardized language.