Multithreading Applications in Win32: The Complete Guide to Threads ~ CD Included | Date: 28 April 2011, 07:51
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Multithreading Applications in Win32: The Complete Guide to Threads
By Jim Beveridge, Robert Wiener
* Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
* Number Of Pages: 400
* Publication Date: 1996-12-29
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0201442345
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780201442342
Product Description:
Programmers will get hands-on experience in when and how to use multithreading, together with expert advice and working examples in C++ and MFC.
Amazon.com Review:
Multithreading--dividing an application into multiple independent streams of execution--is a powerful but potentially intimidating programming technique. Multithreading Applications in Win32: The Complete Guide to Threads teaches you how to build multithreaded applications step by step, starting with simple examples and gradually introducing complicating factors and the Win32 APIs you'll need to deal with them. After you've mastered the basic concepts, you'll learn exactly how to implement multithreading applications using C, C++, and MFC, plus specific applications of multithreading on the Win32 platform. The entire book maintains a conversational tone that helps make potentially complex topics understandable.
Summary: Highly recommended, and info on the CD contents
Rating: 5
Excellent reference on writing, debugging, and maintaining multithreaded code in Windows.
In my day job, I have to maintain and extend a heavily multithreaded service used with a fingerprint sensor. The original authors didn't quite have a handle on C++ or multithreading, and we've had a number of difficult bugs to track down and fix. This book, despite its age, is an excellent reference on multithreading in Windows, and I agree with some other reviewers that it should be mandatory reading for anyone working on multithreaded code.
For those like me who got a copy of this book without the CD, here's how to get it, courtesy of the author:
You can get the source code as follows:
- Go to http://www.awprofessional.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=0201442345&rl=1
- Click on the Downloads tab
- Click on the words "CD Contents"
Summary: Beginners guide to WIN32 threading, bit dated now.
Rating: 3
A beginners guide to multi-threading on WIN32. Experienced developers might find it useful to quickly skim through this book to see if there is anything that they didn't already know, but for the most part anyone with significant experience should find a different book.
The language used in the book is very easy to read, making life easy for newcomers to threading, but possibly woolly enough to be slightly dangerous too, in that some stuff could bits could be misinterpreted. Developing example code using incorrect practices and then slowly fixing the problems is informative, but possibly not the best way of doing things. Why not just go for the right way first and then point out the errors that could have been made? That way it is safe for people to dip into the book and use code as is, rather than having to trawl through for a correct version. Talking about using code from books - do the authors expect the reader to trust their code when they include comments like "This happens occasionally instead of end-of-file. Not sure why" ? Certainly, that means that I would code-review anything I lifted from this book very carefully. More likely, it means that I won't lift anything from this book and will use Jeffrey Richter or Richard Gerber/Andrew Binstock instead.
The book does cover a large range of Windows-related multi-threading topics - from file handling, GUI handling etc through implications for DLLs. It touches on Sockets but only very briefly, which was disappointing. Also particularly disappointing were the chapters on debugging and inter-process communications. There are too many books around that say that testing/debugging multi-threaded code is difficult without coming up with good strategies for overcoming the difficulties. Unit testing, logging and the debugger are useful, but obvious. "you must start making predictions (otherwise known as guesses)" (p268) is certainly an approach, but perhaps the time has come to use an engineering approach?
The material could do with updating, as Windows, C++ and development techniques have all moved on since this book was published. Experienced developers should look forward to Jeffrey Richter's new book, planned for end of 2007, which should be as up to date as it comes.
Despite referring to the CD-ROM the book didn't actually come with one. Instead the source had to be downloaded from the Addison Wesley web-site. Strangely, Addison Wesley do not have an errata for this book on their web-site. Normally I'm a big Addison Wesley fan, but they have done a few silly things with this book. The very first page of the preface had me concerned, when they hyphenated _beginthread to be _begin-thread. Given that this book is aimed at beginners I would be pretty sure that someone, somewhere tried typing that into their computer complete with the hyphen.
Summary: Good but not perfect
Rating: 4
It does a very good job at describing the Win32 API for multithreading but the applications of multithreading assumed is strictly I/O related (Networking,printing,writing/reading files). The set of techniques for parallel processing on the same data is completely absent such as data organization in memory to optimize its parallel access. This is probably due to the age of the book as when it has been written, single core processor system was the norm. Parallel processing will become very important with the growing popularity of the multi core systems. Despite this weakness, this book is still my best recommendation for learning multithreaded programming on Windows since, to my knowledge, there is not yet any book tackling the subject of parallel processing on a Windows/x86 platform.
Summary: Only Windows 95 and NT ???
Rating: 3
Quite useful book. But I wont recommend it. Other than file I/O and threading, it is not for advanced programmers.
From the beginning to end, it only imparts about Win95 and WinNT. None of the OS after Windows 98 are covered. So, much of information covered is obsolete.
I was looking to a complete multithreading book for Windows XP, COM threading models, writing perfect multithreaded GUI application.
Summary: This material is still relevent, even when using .NET
Rating: 5
This material is still relevent, even when using .NET. The discussion of Win32 multithreading transcends any particular development environment used with a Windows 32 bit environment.
The key idea behind this book is getting correct, reproducible results with windows multithreaded applications. Multithreaded applications are very hard to get right and even harder to properly test. The author explains the many sources of problems and how to avoid them.
In order to understand this book's code samples, you will have to understand the Win32 API and code written in Visual C++ for Windows NT. It is important to see examples of these concepts in code.
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