Comments on: Documenting thread safety

By: Capture thread-safety intent via annotations | ModeShape

Capture thread-safety intent via annotations | ModeShape — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:00:08 +0000

[...] 11, 2008 10:25 am Alex points out the difficulties of knowing whether a class can be used within a concurrent manner, and [...]

By: Hamlet D'Arcy

Hamlet D'Arcy — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:38:58 +0000

Ha, yes that might be true. This is why we (Pearson) have had several book clubs focused on Effective Java over the years. The club should just rotate between JCIP and Effective Java every year :)

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:15:40 +0000

Many thanks for the reference, Hamlet. I did this off the top of my head, so I’m glad to be in the ballpark of someone far smarter than me. :) I see that in Item 70. Actually, there is a 5th class “Thread-hostile” mentioned on the next page that I didn’t consider. Probably good to document that too.

Miller’s Hypothesis: “Any interesting Java question has already been thoroughly discussed and decided in either Java Concurrency in Practice or Effective Java.” Discuss.

By: Randall

Randall — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:00:33 +0000

I agree wholeheartedly. For me, putting in those JCIP annotations while I code also helps drive home the intended behavior and keeps me thinking (and rethinking) about how to code correctly so that it's thread-safe.

By: Hamlet D'Arcy

Hamlet D'Arcy — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:57:55 +0000

The 2nd edition of Effective Java contains some really nice advice on how to document thread safety, which lines up nicely with your 4 categories here. Bloch names the categories above as: 1) Immutable, 2) Not thread-safe, 3) unconditionally thread-safe, and 4) conditionally thread-safe. It’s nice to have a common set of names for these things.