The little book of semaphores
The Little Book of Semaphores is a textbook that introduces the principles of synchronization for concurrent programming. In most computer science curricula, synchronization is a module in an Operating Systems class. OS textbooks present a standard set of problems with a standard set of solutions, but most students don't get a good understanding of the material or the ability to solve similar problems. The approach of this book is to identify patterns that are useful for a variety of synchronization problems and then show how they can be assembled into solutions. After each problem, the book offers a hint before showing a solution, giving students a better chance of discovering solutions on their own. The book covers the classical problems, including "Readers-writers," "Producer-consumer," and "Dining Philosophers." In addition, it collects a number of not-so-classical problems. * Published under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. Money raised from the sale of this book supports the development of free software and documentation.
Stats for nerds
18recommend
25mentions
22people
2010–2022years
80% recommend20% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Gonna throw in one of my own picks for Concurrency, I landed on this book a few months ago called “The Little Book of Semaphores” on synchronization with examples in python: https://greenteapress.com/wp/semaphores/
- The Little Book of Semaphores: https://greenteapress.com/semaphores/LittleBookOfSemaphores....
It's about multithreading synchronization issues like the Dining Philosopher's problem, and it's brief, interesting, and very readable.
- I agree that many of these books are hard and super boring to read. That's why I always recommend books that are written in easy and accessible style, such as The Little Schemer, The New Turning Omnibus, and Programming Pearls (not Perl but Pearls by Jon Bentley). Or, books that are written in problem-hint-solution style, such as The Little Book of Semaphores and To Mock a Mockingbird. These are so fun and easy to read.
- There's the "Little Book of Semaphores".
- "The Little Book of Semaphores" also belongs here.
- Allen B. Downey's "The Little Book of Semaphores" is a great resource if you want to go a bit further on understanding how to use these things and design solutions to synchronization problems. It's available for free: https://greenteapress.com/wp/semaphores/
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