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

Some experts feel the answer to your question is to avoid threads altogether, because it's almost impossible to avoid unforseen problems. To quote The Problem with Threads:

We developed a process that included a code maturity rating system (with four levels, red, yellow, green, and blue), design reviews, code reviews, nightly builds, regression tests, and automated code coverage metrics. The portion of the kernel that ensured a consistent view of the program structure was written in early 2000, design reviewed to yellow, and code reviewed to green. The reviewers included concurrency experts, not just inexperienced graduate students (Christopher Hylands (now Brooks), Bart Kienhuis, John Reekie, and [Ed Lee] were all reviewers). We wrote regression tests that achieved 100 percent code coverage... The... system itself began to be widely used, and every use of the system exercised this code. No problems were observed until the code deadlocked on April 26, 2004, four years later.