Software Development Concepts: Concurrency, Testing, and Design
Concurrency and Asynchronous Operations
Race Condition: Occurs when the outcome of a program depends on the non-deterministic timing of events, such as the order in which threads are processed and executed. This happens when multiple threads share the same resource. To prevent, use proper synchronization and wrap resource access in locks.
Deadlock: A situation where two or more threads are waiting for resources held by each other, preventing further progress. To prevent, use nested locks and a lock
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Delegates, Lambdas, and Closures
Delegates: Type-safe function pointers
Lambdas: Anonymous functions
Closures: Functions that capture their environment
Immutable Objects
Cannot be modified after creation
Thread-safe by design
Examples: strings, DateTime
Memory Management
Garbage collection
ref: Pass by referenceout: Must assign value
Pair Programming
Two developers work together
Driver writes code
Navigator reviews and plans
Regular role switching
IDE Features
Debugging tools
Code completion
Refactoring support
Version
Computer Interconnection: Buses, Channels, and Interfaces
Selective Cache Invalidation
To invalidate content selectively, the cache is flushed before a read operation. This forces an update of the main memory content. For a write operation, the processor I/O or channel acts as an extension of DMA, further reducing CPU interference. Traditionally used in mainframes, it’s now common in file servers. These specialized processors execute I/O programs, typically located in the main memory.
Types of Channels
- Selector: Controls multiple fast devices, transferring
Data Structures and Algorithms: Key Concepts
Data Structures
Arrays: Fixed-size, sequentially stored elements. Efficient for index-based access.
Linked Lists: Elements (nodes) linked using pointers. Efficient for insertions/deletions.
Stacks (LIFO): Operations: push(e), pop(), top(), is_empty(), len().
Queues (FIFO): Operations: enqueue(e), dequeue(), first(), is_empty(), len().
Binary Trees: Each node has at most two children (left and right).
- Binary Search Trees (BST): Nodes follow left < root < right rule.
- AVL Trees: Self-balancing BSTs
Analyzing Algorithm Complexities: Binary, Linear, Merge Sort & Recurrences
Algorithm Complexity Analysis
1. Best-Case, Average-Case, and Worst-Case Complexities of Binary Search
Binary search operates on a sorted array. It repeatedly halves the search interval, comparing the target value with the middle element. If the target matches the middle element, its index is returned. Otherwise, the search continues in the left or right half.
Best-case Complexity:
Definition: The minimum time the algorithm takes.
Binary Search Best-case: If the target element is the middle element on
Read MoreC Programming: Arrays, Strings, Structures, Pointers
Numeric Arrays or Vectors
Consider a vector as a sequential formation in memory. All data elements of an array must be of the same data type and the same type of storage.
Declaration
To declare a one-dimensional array, specify the size of the array with a positive integer expression enclosed in square brackets.
Syntax: type-of-storage data-type array_name [expression].
Reference Array Elements
To reference an array element we will use an index. The index value must be a positive integer, it can be an
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