In Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, we covered hazards, primitives, and execution models. In this final part, we will focus on structured concurrency, fan-out/fan-in, fail-fast cancellations, timeout propagation, resource scoping, and observability with thread dumps and Java Flight Recorder (JFR), emphasizing when to choose which pattern.
In Part 1 and Part 2, we covered the fundamentals and building blocks of concurrency. In this part, we will discuss the execution models of concurrency - classic thread pools, task queues, Future/Callable, CompletableFuture, and, from Java 21+, virtual threads and virtual-thread-per-task executors. Choosing among them is ultimately about latency, throughput, and operational simplicity, not about syntax.
In Part 1, we discussed the core concurrency hazards and control concepts in Java: race conditions, visibility, atomicity, deadlocks, starvation, livelock, contention, backpressure, interruption, and cancellation.
In this part, we will discuss the coordination primitives - synchronized, volatile, Atomics, Locks, Semaphores, Blocking Queues, and Concurrent Collections.
Introduction # Here, we will discuss the core concurrency hazards and control concepts in Java: race conditions, visibility, atomicity, deadlocks, starvation, livelock, contention, backpressure, interruption, and cancellation.
Race Conditions # A race condition occurs when the correctness of a task depends on the relative timing or interleaving of threads accessing shared mutable state. The bug is not “thread A ran before B”, it is “if they interleave in this specific way, invariants break.”
Modern APIs frequently access databases, or complex business logic that introduce significant latency and consume CPU and I/O resources. Without caching, every request pays the full cost of database queries, network calls, and computation. This can lead to slow response times and poor scalability as traffic increases.
