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0 pointsbheadmaster3y ago0 comments

I've personally only heard the term "race condition" used to refer to bugs that have their source in non-deterministic execution of programs. In most cases, they refer to a specific sequence of events that the programmer did not foresaw, which lead to incorrect computation.

Using the term "race condition" in context of correct programs would make it cover exactly the same universe of programs as the term "non-determinism". I that think the distinction, however trivial (race condition = incorrect behavior, non-determinism = correct behavior), is still useful.

Great article, by the way. I did not mean to criticize it in any way. My "slight nitpick" about meaning of the words is really just that - a nitpick :)

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shwestrick3y ago

Ah I see. That's a fair point!

When talking about this kind of stuff to people who are unfamiliar with, say, lock-freedom, I've found that "non-determinism" is too vague --- people start thinking about things like randomness, or user interaction, etc. In contrast, the term "race condition" seems to hit the nail on the head.

But certainly, "race condition" also carries with it a bit of baggage ;)

throwawaymaths3y ago

I work in the Erlang VM, and we always say stuff like "whether your output to IO hits first ot the logger line outputs to IO first is a race condition". Neither is substantively wrong, and you could definitely say "it's a race!", grab some popcorn, and watch the electrons do their thing.

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