We make scalable graphics rendering servers to stream things like videogames across the web. When we started the project to switch to virtual threads we had that as number one on the big board. "Rewrite for reentrant locks."
Maybe we have more fastidious engineers than a normal company would since we are in the medical space? But even the juniors were reading and familiarizing themselves on how to properly lock in loom's infancy.
All that only to point out that, yes, they had communicated the proper use of reentrant locks long ago.
I do understand what you're saying from an engineering management perspective though. That effort cost a fortune. Especially when you have the FDA to deal with.
It was more than worth it though! In the world of cloud providers, efficiency is money.
We use the same technologies to deliver, say, remote CT review capability, that you would use to stream a videogame. It's just far more likely that the audience I'm communicating with, HN, is familiar with the requirements of videogame streaming, than it is that they are familiar with remote medical dataset viewing. Obviously the requirements or our use case are far more stringent, but no need to go into all that to illustrate the point made.
1 - Use virtual threads with reentrant locks if you need to do "true heavy" scaling.
2 - Kind of implied, but since you gave the opportunity to make it explicit with your comment =D, there is no need to waste your life on earning no money in videogames when the medical industry is right there willing to pay you 10x as much for the same skills. (Provided your skill is in the hard backend engine and physics work. They pay more for the ML too, if I'm being honest.)
In Virtual Threads: An Adoption Guide part there is:
When using virtual threads, if you want to limit the concurrency of accessing some service, you should use a construct designed specifically for that purpose: the Semaphore class.
That language only obliquely mentions the issue. It is nowhere near clear and direct enough for someone who is just, for example, using a third-party library that is affected. And then it's stuck inside detailed documentation that anyone who wasn't personally planning on adopting virtual threads is unlikely to read.
This seems like it's at least vaguely headed in the direction of that famous scene from early in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
I would like to take this opportunity to thank pron and the amazing jdk developers for working on a state of the art runtime and language ecosystem and providing it for free. Please ignore the entitled, there are many many happy Dev's who can't thank you all enough.
We make scalable graphics rendering servers to stream things like videogames across the web. When we started the project to switch to virtual threads we had that as number one on the big board. "Rewrite for reentrant locks."
Maybe we have more fastidious engineers than a normal company would since we are in the medical space? But even the juniors were reading and familiarizing themselves on how to properly lock in loom's infancy.
All that only to point out that, yes, they had communicated the proper use of reentrant locks long ago.
I do understand what you're saying from an engineering management perspective though. That effort cost a fortune. Especially when you have the FDA to deal with.
It was more than worth it though! In the world of cloud providers, efficiency is money.