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Programming Concepts Intermediate

What is Thread?

The smallest unit of execution within a process, allowing concurrent operations to run within a single program.

Threads share the same memory space within a process, enabling parallel execution of tasks. Multi-threading improves performance for CPU-bound tasks on multi-core processors and keeps applications responsive during I/O operations.

Challenges include race conditions (concurrent access to shared data), deadlocks (threads waiting on each other), and thread safety. Synchronization primitives (mutexes, semaphores) coordinate access. Modern approaches include async/await and actor models.

Related Terms

DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself)
A software development principle that aims to reduce code duplication by abstracting common patterns into reusable components.
Hash Table
A data structure that maps keys to values using a hash function, providing average O(1) time complexity for lookups, insertions, and deletions.
Composition over Inheritance
A design principle favoring object composition (has-a relationships) over class inheritance (is-a relationships) for code reuse.
Event-Driven Architecture
A software design pattern where components communicate by producing and consuming events rather than direct method calls.
Closure
A function that captures and retains access to variables from its enclosing scope, even after that scope has finished executing.
Stack
A data structure that follows Last-In-First-Out (LIFO) ordering, where elements are added and removed from the same end (top).
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