Hello and welcome to Book Overflow. Today, we’re covering “Coordination in Distributed Systems” from Kirill Bobrov’s Grokking Concurrency. “In this episode of Book Overflow, Carter and Nathan discuss the second half of Grokking Concurrency by Kirill Bobrov! Join them as they discuss the mutexes, semaphores, the reactor pattern, and more!” First, they unpack mutexes—binary locks that ensure only one thread accesses a critical section at a time. Then they move on to semaphores, which use a counting mechanism to limit concurrent access. Next, they explore the reactor pattern, an event-driven approach that handles asynchronous I/O efficiently. Throughout the discussion, they highlight real-world trade-offs—avoiding deadlocks, managing contention, and balancing performance with safety. If you’re building distributed systems or diving into concurrency, this episode is packed with practical insights to help you navigate complex coordination challenges. Tune in, subscribe to Book Overflow, and unlock the secrets of concurrent programming with Grokking Concurrency. Thanks for listening.
Link to Article