In this chapter, we will discuss the concept of race conditions and their potential causes in the context of concurrency. The definition of critical section, which is a concept highly relevant to race conditions and concurrent programming, will also be covered. We will use some example code in Python to simulate race conditions and the solutions commonly used to address them. Finally, real-life applications that commonly deal with race conditions will be discussed.
The following topics will be covered in this chapter:
- The basic concept of a race condition, and how it occurs in concurrent applications, along with the definition of critical sections
- A simulation of a race condition in Python and how to implement race condition solutions
- The real-life computer science concepts that commonly interact and work with race conditions