Traditionally, parallel programming was always implemented with a focus on threads and data sharing. The only support we programmers got from the operating system and the language runtime libraries were thread—and synchronization—related functions. We were able to create a thread, maybe set some thread parameters (like thread priority), and kill a thread. We were also able to create some synchronization mechanisms—a critical section, mutex, or a semaphore. But that was all.
As you are not skipping ahead and you read the previous two chapters, you already know that being able to start a new thread and do the locking is not nearly enough. Writing parallel code that way is a slow, error-prone process. That's why in the last decade the focus in parallel code has shifted from threads to tasks and patterns. Everyone is doing it—Microsoft...
