Thread Time: The MultiThreaded Programming Guide (Paperback)

by Scott J. Norton (Author), Mark D. DiPasquale (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The easiest way for programmers to learn important new multi-threading techniques that are increasingly important in Windows NT/95, UNIX, POSIX, and other application development.Each concept in the book is illustrated with a picture, making this an exceptionally easy-to-understand guide. The book introduces the process model, the thread model, and basic thread management functions. Learn how to synchronize and schedule threads. In a Programming Guidelines chapter, learn the basic do's and don'ts of multithreaded programming. The book includes extensive examples, exercises and references, including manual pages, debugging advice, and a CD-ROM loaded with practical information.This book is an effective introduction to multithreading for both professional programmers and students.

From the Publisher
Understand multithreading, the next dimension in high-performance computing. Thread Time is the easiest programmer's guide to the important new multi-threading techniques that are increasingly important in Windows NT/95, UNIX, POSIX, and other application development. Each concept in the book is illustrated with a picture, making this an exceptionally easy-to-understand book. The book introduces the process model, the thread model, and basic thread management functions. Learn how to synchronize and schedule threads. In a Programming Guidelines chapter, learn the basic do's and don'ts of multithreaded programming. The book includes extensive examples, exercises and references, including manual pages, debugging advice, and a CD-ROM loaded with practical information. This book is an effective introduction to multithreading for both professional programmers and students.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR (November 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131900676
• ISBN-13: 978-0131900677
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,077,759 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You need another book as well..., September 29, 2002

By	Jo Totland (Oslo, Oslo Norway) - See all my reviews

Having recently re-read this book, I find it's explanations of various concepts relatively clear, if a little verbose. The book is 50% of the time quite good at explaining something, and 50% of the time exceedingly dull and tedious, obviously large parts of boilerplate text must have been cutted and pasted into various parts of the text.

What the book does not give you, is an introduction to concurrent programming. This is a pity, because most programmers aren't especially well trained in tackling concurrent programming. The mindset involved is different, and formal proofs suddenly becomes more important than debugging.

To make matters worse, the examples in the book is completely and utterly useless. In the first half of the book, they typically exercise one API function at the time, with 5 lines of comments per api call. In the latter half, sometime, you can see a few API calls in sequence, but none of the examples in the book will help you getting ideas for how to structure a complete multithreaded application.

On the bright side, to someone already knowledgeable about concurrent programming, the discussions in the book of the same issues related to pthreads make it possible to gain a thorough understanding of how to program pthreads safely.

Would I recommend the book? Yes, I am not aware of that many other pthreads books, but this book clearly has a lot of useful content. But it certainly has a split personality. Half the time, targetting the idiot who can't even figure out how to call an api function given the prototype and a description of it's semantics, and half the time giving actual useful information on issues regarding the use of pthreads and its interaction with processes, signals, and other parts of the unix environment.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Needs better examples, January 3, 1998

By A Customer

Best book I've seen on the subject of POSIX thread programming. My only criticism is that the examples are lame. They excercise the API calls described in the preceeding text without adding any helpful context, insight, or details.

The author would have done better to provide one or two fairly complex case studies as examples, with analysis of their design process and tradeoffs. Instead there are small examples of every little detail of the API, that they add nothing of value to the book.

That criticism aside, it is a well-written, useful book, which I highly recommend.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book for introduction to threads and POSIX, December 25, 1997

By A Customer

This seems to be the only good book I have come across on the basics of thread programming. Focused on POSIX, comparison is provided between process and threads, which slowly but surely convinces the reader the significance of using threads and also, when to use them. Finally, the best feature I liked was that each topic is discussed and then the use is illustrated by a small independent program (sometimes 'extern' functions have been used which might require use of a previous source code). Overall, best book I have come across for getting introduced to thread programming. If there are even better ones ( beginners level) I am interested to know.