Daniel Moth said
Simply put, Joe Duffy is a world-wide authority on this topic. I don't just say that based on working with him (his office was 5 offices down the hall from mine), but also based on the conversations I've seen him dominate with other visionaries inside of Microsoft. If you don't take my word for it, just look at how elegant the Parallel Extensions to the .NET framework are that Joe was the dev lead and architect on. If you want to see examples of how clearly he can put his thoughts to writing, just visit his blog (http://www.bluebytesoftware.com/). 5 stars are not enough for this seminal piece of work.
P. Marule said
good material for beginner and advanced threaded developer. concepts are easy to test compared to other materials on same concept.
DEH said
This book provides an exhaustive treatment of everything concurrency in .NET and Win32.
It's organized very clearly into multiple sections: Concepts, Mechanisms, Techniques, Systems, and Appendices, and isn't missing a single thing. From background information about the roots of present day parallel algorithms and architecture, to how Windows and the CLR work internally, to higher level application models and best practices, it's all there...
As other reviewers said, this is the only book you'll need on the topic. The competition just doesn't have the broad coverage and incredible level of depth as this one. The book can be daunting at first, mostly because of its size (almost 1000 pages), but I found it surprisingly well written and enjoyable to read. Much better written than most techie books. It took me a few months to finish. I guess the author could have shortened it, but I don't know what content could have gone; the book just wouldn't be as great without every nugget of information that's in there right now. Some of the sections (like the ones on concurrent containers, detailed parallel algorithms like sorting, and memory models) took multiple reads for everything to sink in. I'm still not sure I've absorbed it all, but thankfully the book's organization makes it suitable as a reference too.
The target audience for the book as stated is any .NET or Windows programmer. Realistically, it's best for senior architects and developers, but could also be used to teach a university course or be read by less experienced developers too. I actually ordered copies for my whole team of 30 developers, all ranging in seniority, and it's basically required reading at this point. The author makes the point that concurrency is everywhere, and it's true. So the book isn't only for advanced new-age parallel programs on multi-core, but also server-side programming (web, app, SQL, map/reduce, data mining) and web apps. Really, everybody needs to know this stuff to be taken seriously. I've started using lots of these topics as interview questions.
What's best, the book is written by a Microsoft guy who runs the team building new concurrency APIs in .NET and Win32 today. (See his blog at http://www.bluebytesoftware.com/blog/ -- there's even a sample chapter there.) This gives the book far more authority than any other on the topic. I've downloaded CTPs of the .NET 4.0 parallel extensions (really amazing stuff), and the book demonstrates in detail how a lot of it is built. There's even an appendix covering the new APIs, so not only does it help build real parallel applications today, it also shows what's coming down the road.
In summary: A fun, enlightening read! I'm actually considering rereading the full 1000 pages again come this summer...
P. Greborio said
Multithreading programming is hard and requires a lot of knowledge of the various platforms and a lot of concentration. This book provides a very complete and dense picture of what means multithreading in Windows, elegantly covering both managed and native code. This is definitively a book for programmers, who are eager to not only understand how but also why.
Oren Ellenbogen said
I'll split my review into 3 parts:
Know what you get (book's goals): 4/10. The book is a bit "all over the place". It's hard to understand the intent of the book -- it's a bit too theoretical for a "pragmatic concurrent development" that it claims to be which makes the entire book a bit fuzzy and way too long. The problem with this kind of books that you usually can't read all (reading 800+ pages is too much for most people) and you're afraid of missing important parts.
Coverage: 9/10. This book is a great "ref" book in my bookshelf, it explains high level architecture to very deep bits&bytes usage in a very readable fashion. I've got a list of pages that I recommended every one of our developers to read, starting from basic things and dive into data structures, interesting pitfalls and solutions and specific tips & tricks that I found very interesting during my reading.
Relevance: 10/10. This is a must have book for windows developers (especially for .Net developers). It contains crucial basics with an amazing list of examples and best practices (need to be pulled out carefully, but it's there).
I'm still missing a well organized "common concurrent pitfalls & solutions" chapter for the pragmatic developers (assuming that the background exists).
All in all, I highly recommend this book! nice work!
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