Thin locks: featherweight synchronization also for Smalltalk by Jan Vrany
Channel: FAST - Fundación Argentina de Smalltalk
Date: 21/11/2017

Traditional and still prevalent concurrency model is based on threads and shared mutable state. Smalltalk is no different in that respect, having processes that can run concurrently virtually "ever since". The traditional solution to prevent race condition is to use locks for synchronization. Many actions must be properly synchronized, even the simplest things like a Transcript or an access to a method source code. In this presentation I will talk about motivation, use and actual implementation of thinlocks - a fast locking mechanism invented for Java - in scope of Smalltalk.