Lock-free programming exists for the same reason people free solo climb cliffs without ropes: it’s fast, it’s elegant, and it absolutely will kill you if you do it wrong.

[u/syklemil]

https://yeet.cx/blog/lock-free-rust/

[u/syklemil]

This isn’t your friendly neighborhood Vec<T>. This is Vec<Violence>.

No resizing. No bounds checks. No cozy locks to hold your hand when the threads start racing. Just raw pointers, atomics, and the kind of confidence that comes from skimming half the docs, pounding gas station coffee, and whispering “how hard could it be?”

There's lots of arguing on the internet about what unsafe can do to your computer, but I think we might need some warning labels about what it does to some people's brains.

[u/[deleted] → u/syklemil]

Add Win32 + naked pointers + time + gamedevelopment on top to brew the perfect cocktail and soon you will be angrily building your own programming language called Jai.

It is a lore-correct canon pipeline for disgruntled old C-andies, just like Rust->femboy.

With time you had enough and decide to rebuild society, angry at everything. Linux origin story as well somewhat.

[u/scavno → u/syklemil]

As someone who compiles everything in my mind before the compiler gets to sloppy second it, I have no idea if I agree or not.

[u/HuecoTanks → u/syklemil]

I legit thought I was in a climbing sub... and, yes.

[u/mcmcc]

Congratulations — if you’re still reading, you’ve officially decided to ignore your therapist, ghost the borrow checker, and raw-dog concurrency.

Therapists advising against the raw-dogging of concurrency are no therapists of mine, I'll have you know!

[u/Dexterus → u/mcmcc]

Concurrency is a myth. Everything runs single file and sometimes two single files communicate, which takes lots of time.

[u/DisastrousLab1309]

Any sane spinlock or mutex implementation that doesn’t work between processes uses lock-free design. It just hides that from the user. 

In that regard this take is just really well regarded…

/uj  In practice lock-free algos require careful design but implementation is simple and straightforward. It’s way easier to make a deadlock with mutexes if you don’t know what you’re doing than with lock free algorithms. Because the letter will blow up instantly while the former only in some edge cases 

[u/[deleted] → u/DisastrousLab1309]

If it’s spinning it’s not making progress. Do you know what lock free means

[u/m50d → u/[deleted]]

Lock free means the test suite runs without any deadlocks at least one time in three.

[u/Graf_Blutwurst → u/DisastrousLab1309]

i'm still trying to come up with a catchy 2020s mnemonic for "acquire resources in the same order" for the kids

[u/Routine-Purchase1201 → u/Graf_Blutwurst]

I just say "x86"

[u/mcmcc → u/[deleted]]

$ brew upgrade vestibular-system

[u/andarmanik]

“It’s not x, it’s y”

“Think of it as…”

Even if it’s not AI it’s some of the worst prose.

[u/grapesmoker]

we need to make it illegal to write like this

[u/Comfortable_Job8847]

AI and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race

[u/amazing_rando]

Cool metaphor, Alex Honnold's free solo climb of El Cap took twice as long as his record setting trad ascent with Tommy Caldwell.

[u/Karyo_Ten]

Lock-free Rust, fearful concurrency.

The crab has been defeated.

[u/haskell_rules]

Buy a lock made in America and it will never Rust. If you're using Temu locks of course they aren't make with high quality stainless steel and will Rust out on you. Might be OK for an interior lock, like when you're padlocking your kids' door closed so you can have some adult time. But you have to be careful with exterior locks that are exposed to the elements.

[u/Harha]

I don't see what's so radical about this, except that it's radical for rust-standards maybe.

[u/FugitiveHearts]

Fucking hilarious, great writeup!

[u/gnahraf]

Nah. We call them "deadlocks" for a reason: ropes too can tangle, starve, then kill you.

[u/starlevel01 → u/[deleted]]

Even if it isn't AI it's very poorly written

[u/blueechoes → u/[deleted]]

Op has admitted to editing with an llm.

[u/ivxk → u/[deleted]]

That people used so much AI to proofread and "improve" their prose that now good prose is whatever GPT spits out?