Svitla Smart Talk: Gentle Introduction to Lock-Free Programming in Java
Curious about lock-free programming but only familiar with using locks in concurrent Java?
This talk is for you!
We’ll make lock-free programming approachable—starting with why it matters and the basics of progress guarantees. You’ll learn to distinguish between wait-freedom, lock-freedom, and obstruction-freedom, and understand why these guarantees are crucial for scalable systems.
Next, we’ll explore key lock-free programming idioms such as Compare-And-Swap (CAS) for atomic updates, markable references for efficient state management, and the sentinel node technique for simplifying concurrent data structures.
The infamous ABA problem will also be demystified—what it is, why it causes trouble, and how to overcome it with techniques like versioning. You’ll then see these ideas in action as we implement three lock-free data structures in Java: a stack, a queue, and a linked list—showing the real-world applications and challenges of lock-free techniques.
Finally, we’ll compare the performance characteristics of lock-free versus traditional locking approaches. You’ll learn when lock-free programming provides better scalability and when sticking with locks might still be the right choice.
Join us to level up your concurrent programming skills and confidently experiment with lock-free techniques in your Java projects!
Speaker
Jarosław Pałka - Senior Staff Software Engineer, Team lead, Benchmarking infrastructure in Neo4j.
He is a performance engineer/team lead with more than 20 years in the IT industry as a database administrator, programmer, architect, manager, and onsite disaster engineer. Jaroslaw authors a blog in http://geekyprimitives.com/, and is one of the founders of the SegFault conference brand.
Event details:
Date - 28 October
Time: CDT - 12:00 PM |7:00 PM UA | 6:00 PM PL |11:00 AM MX |11:00 AM CR| 2:00 PM AR
Duration - 1.5 hours (60 min. speech + 30 min. Q&A)
Language - English
All other details will be sent after registration.
