Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by chrisseaton 2448 days ago
Event A is your comment. Event B is my comment. If your comment gets to the server first if gets ID 1. If mine gets to the server first it gets ID 1. Which ID you get depends on timing outside your control. They race to get the ID. A race condition.
1 comments

So what? What’s missing is that unless something depends on the ordering of those ids, it really isn’t a race condition. Just plain happening of events is the inevitable passage of time, not a race condition. What is interesting about what happens downstream with those IDs?

You’re not wrong that not all race conditions are harmful, but i feel you’re doing a pretty bad job of explaining what a race condition is.