[mumblemumble]

> All you need to guarantee synchronization of primitive values in Java is the use of volatile

I think I know what you mean, but that's a very dangerous way to word it when speaking in public. It would be more correct to say that "all you need to guarantee reads are protected by memory barriers is volatile."

The distinction matters because, to someone who doesn't already know all about volatile, the way you worded it might lead them to believe that `x++;` is an atomic statement if x is volatile, which is not true. That's a specific example of where things like atomic types are necessary.

(For the curious: https://www.baeldung.com/java-atomic-variables)

I think maybe what you're missing about what I'm saying is that I'm trying to mainly talk for the benefit of people who don't have a solid understanding of how to do safe and performant multithreading. Which is the vast majority of programmers. For that sort of audience, I tend to agree with dragontamer that "just use a mutex" is probably the safest advice to start out. Producing results faster doesn't count for much if you're producing wrong results faster.