Java Concurrency & Multithreading: beginner to intermediate

Learn Java multi-threading and resolve data and race conditions with volatile, atomics, and synchronized

Created by: Kiryl Yesipau
Engineering Leader & Expert

What Will I Learn?

• A high-level overview of process management by the operating system
• A high-level overview of thread management by the operating system
• The fundamental difference between a process and a thread
• How to define a thread using the Thread subclassing approach
• How to define a thread by implementing the Runnable interface
• The different states of a thread and its lifecycle
• How to start threads using the start() method and the ExecutorService
• The strategy for reusing threads employed by the ExecutorService
• How to define a thread by implementing the Callable interface
• How to use the Future interface in blocking and non-blocking ways
• The usage of daemon threads
• The functionality of the Thread's .join() and .interrupt() methods
• The concept of data race and its details
• How to use the 'volatile' keyword to avoid data race
• The concept of mutex / intrinsic lock / monitor
• The concept of race condition, its details and difference from the data race
• How to use the 'synchronized' keyword to implement mutex/monitor acquire in Java
• The concept of the compare-and-swap CPU instruction
• A high-level overview of the Java atomics package and its relation to compare-and-swap
• How to use the AtomicInteger class to avoid arithmetic operation race condition
• The usage of the ThreadLocal class in Java
• How to take thread dumps of the JVM process
• How to use the .parallelStream() method in the Java Streaming API

Requirements

• No experience with concurrency or multithreading is required
• Java version 1.8 or newer should be installed
• Basic programming skills in Java, such as variable definition and if-else statements, are required
• Understanding the meaning of 'final', 'static', and 'this' keywords in Java is required
• Understanding pass-by-reference in respect to passing object parameters to methods in Java is required

Target audience

• Beginner Java developers without prior experience with multi-threading
• Intermediate and advanced Java developers seeking a deeper understanding of basic concepts behind multi-threading
• Developers switching from another language to Java who are planning to write multi-threading code
• Professionals preparing for Java multithreading interviews at the beginner to intermediate level