Best programming approach/methodology to assure thread safety

Question

When I was learning Java coming from a background of some 20 years of procedural programming with basic, Pascal, COBOL and C, I thought at the time that the hardest thing about

Answer 1

This not only applies to Java but to threaded programming in general. I find myself avoiding most of the concurrency and latency problems just by following these guidelines:

1/ Let each thread run its own lifetime (i.e., decide when to die). It can be prompted from outside (say a flag variable) but it in entirely responsible.

2/ Have all threads allocate and free their resources in the same order - this guarantees that deadlock will not happen.

3/ Lock resources for the shortest time possible.

4/ Pass responsibility for data with the data itself - once you notify a thread that the data is its to process, leave it alone until the responsibility is given back to you.