The Dangers of Spin-Loops in Programming: Why Developers Should Trust OS Scheduling
By
bdash
Kettled twice. Extra chewy, extra trustworthy.
Summary
The article is a technical blog post by an experienced software developer discussing the recurring problems with spin-loops in programming projects. The author shares personal experience with both implementing and suffering from spin-lock issues, expressing frustration at seeing the same mistakes repeated across multiple projects. The post serves as a warning to developers about the dangers of spin-loops and advocates for trusting operating system scheduling mechanisms rather than implementing custom spinning solutions. The author references multiple existing resources on the topic but believes more awareness is needed to prevent common pitfalls in concurrent programming.
Key quotes
· 5 pulledThis is the 3rd project in less than a year where I've seen issues with spin-loops.
I've been dealing with spinning threads for many years now, and I won't lie: over the years I've been both on the offender and victim side.
I'm getting tired of seeing the same issues again and again, which usually makes for a good reason to write a blog post so that, hopefully, people will read it and stop making the same mistakes others did.
Actually, many others have written about this, covering various issues related to spin locks... But I guess there's never enough material on those subjects.
Embark on a journey about why you should sometimes trust your OS more than yourself.
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