Issue #1 - A Science of Concurrent Programs
A Science of Concurrent Programs
Another weekend, another weekend read, this time all about A Science of Concurrent Programs
My book Thinking in Distributed Systems is now available. 12 chapters, full of mental models, diagrams, illustrations, and examples, all about distributed systems.
2024 starts with a bang 🎆
The book A Science of Concurrent Programs by Leslie Lamport is a comprehensive treatise on the theory and practice of concurrent programming.
Leslie Lamport traces the development of concurrent algorithms, highlighting their complexity and the necessity for rigorous correctness proofs. This includes a historical perspective, beginning with early concurrent algorithms and evolving to modern practices.
Early on, the book delivers a profound insight: Algorithms are not simply correct, algorithms are correct in respect to a specification.
So we have to ask ourselves: Is an implementation faithful to a specification?!
How do we answer this question? A significant focus of the book is the Temporal Logic of Actions (TLA) to formally capture the specification and possible implementations of an algorithm.
This read a fantastic read for software engineers keen on mastering concurrent programming's theoretical and practical aspects while getting to know formal methods.
Happy Reading
A Science of Concurrent Programs
Leslie Lamport
The science that is the subject of this book, which I will call our science, is a mathematical theory with a practical goal. That goal is to help build concurrent programs that work correctly.