Introduction

Multithreading can be your biggest problem if you cannot handle it with care. One of the fathers of the Delphi compiler used to say:

"New programmers are drawn to multithreading like moths to a flame, with similar results."

– Danny Thorpe

In this chapter, we will discuss some of the main techniques to handle single or multiple background threads. We'll talk about shared resource synchronization and thread-safe queues and events. The last three recipes will talk about the Parallel Programming Library introduced in Delphi XE7, and I hope that you will love it as much as I love it. Multithreaded programming is a huge topic. So, after reading this chapter, although you will not become a master of it, you will surely be able to approach the concept of multithreaded programming with confidence, and will have the basics to move to more specific stuff...