Multithreading Applications in WIN32: The Complete Guide to Threads

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"

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.

It's old, and the sample code has some flaws, but the text is so damn clear that this book is a must buy. Nothing important is skimped, nothing is confused, nothing is concealed behind excess verbage. Both the Windows threading api and the deeper principles behind designing threaded apps are dealt with more than competently. A star taken away for some buggy sample code, but a star added for wrting clearly about threading, an area that's notoriusly hard to write about or explain well.

This is a very focused book. I found it a good companion book to other Windows programming books. It doesn't try to go into areas outside of it's scope like discussing MFC programming or C++ programming. If you want to know about threads and how to program using the WIn32 threading model then get this book.

This book has been essential for writing our multi-threading, commercial apps. The material begins by providing an explanation for why threads are useful, and follows with a thorough explanation of how to synchronise the activities of many threads. Synchronisation is perhaps the biggest obstacle to producing a working multi-threaded app. I found the most useful chapter to be 10: Threads in MFC. This shows how to create worker threads, derived from CWinThread, instead of calling AfxBeginThread(). This allows you to design classes that represent your threads in a more object-oriented way. The book is clearly typeset, with good explanations of both good technique and the common mistakes that can easily be made when starting out. The FAQ section also helped with common problems that turned up.I recommend a good understanding of C++ to get the most out of this book, though this isn't essential.In my opinion, this is *the* book for understanding the theory and practice involved in Multithreaded apps for Win 32. Fortunately, I found this book before writing any multi-threaded apps and I cannot recommend it enough!