At first glance, writing concurrent programs in Java seems like a straightforward task. But the devil is in the details. Fortunately, these details are strictly regulated by the Java memory model which, roughly speaking, decides what values a program can observe for a field at any given time. Without respecting the memory model, a Java program might behave erratically and yield bugs that only occur on some hardware platforms. This presentation summarizes the guarantees that are given by Java's memory model and teaches how to properly use volatile and final fields or synchronized code blocks. Instead of discussing the model in terms of memory model formalisms, this presentation builds on easy-to-follow Java code examples.

Talk Level:
INTERMEDIATE

Bio:
Rafael works as a software consultant in Oslo, Norway. He is a proponent of static typing and a JVM enthusiast with particular interest in code instrumentation, concurrency and functional programming. Rafael blogs about software development, regularly presents at conferences and was pronounced a JavaOne Rock Star. When coding outside of his work place, he contributes to a wide range of open source projects and often works on Byte Buddy, a library for simple runtime code generation for the Java virtual machine. For his work, Rafael received a Duke's Choice, an Oracle groundbreaker award award and was elected a Java Champion.