About the readers

• If you know multithreading, please "Fly, you fools"
• Otherwise, knowing that I take some time to put black on white what I red/saw/heard, your are more than welcome if you have some constructve feedback
• For the rest, as a reader you're supposed to :
  • know some C++
  • have spent some time looking around for information about multithreading (youtube, books, web pages...)
  • be interrested in code snippets which could help you quickly experiments with what you learnt elsewhere so far
  • be willing to avoid the very low level thread API provided by your beloved platform (pthread and others)
  • trust the C++ committee to improve the high level tooling at our disposal today
• Keep in mind this is not a multithreading course but instead a set of code snippets that helps to experiment what you learnt.

About the chapters

• The subject (multithreading) is divided into chapters
• Since I don't know what will happen when I will add new chapters, even if today I already have 15 chapters, they are numbered from 010 to 150
• Doing so, if at one point, I need to insert more chapters then I can name them 011 or 009 for example.
• However I will not hesitate to reorder the chapters if I really need.

About the setup

• OS : So far I did the testing under Windows 10 and Linux (Debian Cinnamon)
• Compilers : On Windows I use Microsoft compiler. It is usually up to date. Today (May, 9 2017) it is self described as : C/C++ version 19.14.26428.1 for x64. Under Linux I use g++ (gcc 7.2.0). All code target the x64 platform and is compiled with std=c++17
• IDE : I use VS Code to edit and build the code snippets. I don't use Visual Studio under Windows because each chapter is a single .cpp file and I want to keep the setup as light as possible. Yes, I know, Visual Studio can work without project nor solution but to tell the thruth I'm not yet able to do what I want in this mode. Last but not least VS Code is working like a charm under Linux.
• You might be interrested in readng this page to learn more about VS Code setup : https://www.40tude.fr/blog/how-to-compile-cpp-code-with-vscode-cl/
• If you have another IDE, you should be able to copy and paste the C++ source code and build it.

About the source code

• Each chapter consist of a single source code
• Each source code consist of one or more code section
• Each code section is physically separated from the others by at least 10 empty lines (this help to catch the eyes)
• Obviously, only one section can be active at one time. Otherwise the source contains 2 main() functions and it cannot be built.
• So... Get prepared to use / and * or to use CTRL+(K, C) and CTRL+(K, U) to comment and uncomment sections of code
• Again, most code sections are autonomous. This means that each uncommented section can be compiled and built on its own.
• If a section does'nt compile or crashes at run time then a comment warn the reader at the top of the section of code.
• Each code section contains a fair amount of comments
• These comments usually starts at row 81 (moderns screen and today's resolution allow such setup)
• When needed, comments on the right of the source code starts with a number. In this case, it is worth reading the comments following the numbers in increasing order.
• While reading one file, if one section of code is an improvement of the previous one, then, the comments are not repeated in order to ease the reading of the new section.

About the process

You use VS code and cl under Windows

1. Open the x64 Developer Comand Prompt (availble in the Visual Studio 2017 group)
2. Reach the directory of the chapter you're interrested in
3. On the command line interface type in : "code ." (don't forget the dot)
4. Press CTRL+SHIFT+D and make sure "(Windows) Launch" is selected
5. Press CTRL+SHIFT+B to build the code (check tasks.json if needed)
6. Press SHIFT+F5 to run the debug version of the code
7. When the code ends, back in VS Code, open main.cpp and read the comments
8. Set breakpoints, debug and trace the code again and again. Ideally you should not need any console output. The debugger is your friend!
9. Copy/paste, modify, improve the code. Accumulate experience even if to do so you have to break everything :-)

You use VS code and g++ under Linux

1. Launch VS Code and open the directory you're interrested in (CTRL+K, CTRL+O)
2. Press ALT+T, select "Execute the task..." option, then select "Linux Debug" (check tasks.json if needed)
3. Press CTRL+SHIFT+D and make sure "(gdb) Launch" is selected
4. Press SHIFT+F5 to run the debug version of the code
5. When the code ends, back in VS Code, open main.cpp and read the comments
6. Set breakpoints, debug and trace the code again and again. Ideally you should not need any console output. The debugger is your friend!
7. Copy/paste, modify, improve the code. Accumulate experience even if to do so you have to break everything :-)

You don't use cl but you use VS Code

1. Open VS Code
2. Open the folder of interrest (CTRL+K, CTRL+O)
3. Open the file main.cpp
4. Open and adapt the tasks.json file
5. Open and adapt the launch.json
6. CTRL+SHIFT+B to build the code
7. SHIFT+F5 to run the debug version
8. When the debug version build and run, come back to the source and read the comments
9. Set breakpoints, debug and trace the code again and again. Ideally you should not need any console output. The debugger is your friend!
10. Copy/paste, modify, improve the code. Accumulate experience even if to do so you have to break everything :-)

If under Windows you use clang with VS Code you might be interrested in this post : https://www.40tude.fr/blog/compile-cpp-code-with-vscode-clang/

If you don't use cl nor VS Code

1. Reach the folder of interrest
2. Copy the file main.cpp
3. Past it in your favorite IDE or toolchain
4. Build the debug version of the code
5. Run the debug version
6. Come back to the source and read the comments
7. Set breakpoints, debug and trace the code again and again. Ideally you should not need any console output. The debugger is your friend!
8. Copy/paste, modify, improve the code. Accumulate experience even if to do so you have to break everything :-)

Webliograpphy

Youtube

• This playlist
• Bo Qian playlist on concurrency
• ...

Books

• Concurrency in Action
• The last chapter (or so) of The C++ Standard Library: A Tutorial and Reference
• Effective Modern C++ (items 35-40)
• A tour of C++ (1st Edition) chap 13. If you are interrested in the code you may want to look this project on Github
• ...

Web pages

• cppreference
• C++ Core Guidelines on Concurrency and Parallelism
• Is Parallel Programming Hard, And, If So, What Can You Do About It?
• Bartosz Milewski web site
• The promises and challenges of std::async task-based parallelism in C++11