[HN Gopher] The Art of Multiprocessor Programming 2nd Edition Bo...
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       The Art of Multiprocessor Programming 2nd Edition Book Club
        
       Author : eatonphil
       Score  : 221 points
       Date   : 2025-08-02 13:43 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (eatonphil.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (eatonphil.com)
        
       | eatonphil wrote:
       | Hey folks, this is the 7th book in a series of readings I run
       | over Google Groups. There are about 1800 people in the group and
       | 300-800 join each reading. While we often read books on database
       | internals this one seems pretty relevant to any developer working
       | on systems that scale. Hope to have you in the group!
       | 
       | Also even if you don't want to join this particular reading, join
       | the mailing list for the overall book club (on /bookclub.html)
       | because we're going to read Designing Data Intensive Applications
       | 2nd Edition together after it comes out this winter.
        
         | raphinou wrote:
         | I wasn't aware of this initiative, looks interesting and such a
         | good idea in hindsight!
         | 
         | Might be a good help to keep the enthousiasm and energy to read
         | a technical book in its entirety!
        
         | sandeep1998 wrote:
         | I am so surprised to hear about this book reading club, I don't
         | know how it works but I will join and try to work through the
         | book like everyone else.
        
         | dardeaup wrote:
         | What a cool idea! I'll join if my schedule allows. Thanks for
         | doing this.
        
         | larodi wrote:
         | Sir, would you care to perhaps elaborate as to how this club
         | business works. Potentially lots of folks interested. Thanks.
        
           | eatonphil wrote:
           | Do you have a specific question beyond what's on this page?
        
             | larodi wrote:
             | Yes. Does participating in this discussion impact the
             | consequent editions of said books?
             | 
             | Perhaps I didn't see this answered in the page referenced.
             | 
             | How did you get word to spread to begin with? Google
             | groups?
             | 
             | Is everyone welcome or there's certain prerequisite?
             | 
             | Thanks for ur time.
        
               | eatonphil wrote:
               | I don't understand your first two questions, I'm sorry,
               | and the third question is answered on /bookclub.html
               | (which is linked to from this page).
        
         | danilevsky wrote:
         | Interesting idea! This is an excellent book for learning about
         | concurrency and parallelism. I'll join if I can find the time.
         | 
         | For reference, the second edition includes two additional
         | chapters: "Optimism and manual memory management" and
         | "Transactional programming". Did you intentionally skip those?
         | :)
        
         | mettamage wrote:
         | Herlihy used to have video lectures up. He gave lectures to
         | university students and he recorded it one year. I was lucky
         | enough to watch them. We had this course for my computer
         | science master. It was a good course thanks to this book :)
        
       | fire2dev wrote:
       | Hi Phil, I want to join the group. The form asks "chapter
       | discussion starter email", what do you mean by that?
        
         | eatonphil wrote:
         | It's explained on the page. :) Each week someone kicks off
         | discussion. The form helps me find a volunteer for each
         | chapter.
         | 
         | It's what makes it sustainable for me to keep running this
         | group.
        
       | evaXhill wrote:
       | This seems great! Would love to join however I can only seem to
       | find the 2008 and 2012 pdf of The Art of Multiprocessor
       | Programming for free, is there a link for the 2020 version?
        
         | Aurornis wrote:
         | It's not a free book. I believe that comment was a gentle nudge
         | to remind people they actually need to buy it to support the
         | author.
        
           | evaXhill wrote:
           | Thanks! I was just confirming because the older versions were
           | available for free, but I do agree
        
       | thedima wrote:
       | Sounds like an amazing idea. Looking forward to it!
        
       | rudedogg wrote:
       | Signed up. Concurrency has been a bit of a blindspot for me
       | outside the basics. It'll be nice to be able to really evaluate
       | approaches and understand the internals.
        
       | twolf910616 wrote:
       | Hello! I just signed up. Is there a way I can view past book
       | discussions?
        
       | tbbfjotllf wrote:
       | This seems interesting. Any specific reason why it's over emails
       | instead of something like a forum or discord?
        
         | xeromal wrote:
         | Google groups is a forum but discord has horrible historical
         | retention.
        
         | Jtsummers wrote:
         | Discord would be unpleasant for something like this with so
         | many participants. It's a similar reason to skipping out on
         | Hangouts, Zoom, etc. It forces synchronization, if you're not
         | online during the discussion you're effectively barred from it.
         | It can be very hard to catch up and very hard to respond to any
         | particular thread of discussion. Discord is also, by design,
         | essentially single-threaded. You can reply to specific comments
         | but it's still presented in an interleaved format which makes
         | tracking difficult when multiple threads of discussion are
         | occurring at once.
         | 
         | If the discussion is light, it's a non-issue, but with 300-800
         | (per eatonphil's comment) it's likely that it will not be
         | light.
        
           | tbbfjotllf wrote:
           | Your criticism of discord for this use case is valid. I
           | didn't mean it has to be discord, it could be any platform as
           | long as it allows having proper discussions without being a
           | pain. I believe something like a flarum forum would be way
           | better for this use case.
        
             | jpablo wrote:
             | What's wrong with email?
        
           | eatonphil wrote:
           | Only a minority actively participates. But it's for all the
           | other reasons you mention yes.
           | 
           | And, unrelatedly, even though few actively participate that
           | isn't the point. It is a motivational vehicle. And I
           | repeatedly hear about this from folks who join and don't
           | participate. That's perfectly fine with me.
        
             | miguelbemartin wrote:
             | It's hard to keep people active for this kind of
             | initiatives. I am also running an engineering book club and
             | found the same challenges, especially with timezones.
             | However, as soon as you find a group that can join every
             | week at the same time over Zoom, it's the best way to build
             | community and enjoy the discussions.
        
               | eatonphil wrote:
               | I'm happy with how what I've got works for us. Of course
               | anyone can and should join or start the version that
               | suits their taste!
        
       | xeromal wrote:
       | Thanks for this! Signed up. Do we get an invite to the group.
        
       | leginachen wrote:
       | I saw a past iteration was in person in NYC. Do you still do in
       | person or is it all virtual now?
        
         | eatonphil wrote:
         | The very first one I did was in person in NYC. Of the 20 who
         | signed up 5-7 actively showed up. I decided to move it purely
         | asynchronous online to make it easier for anyone anywhere to
         | participate. I host other meetups in NYC still just not a tech
         | book club.
        
       | Keyframe wrote:
       | It says to find a 2020, but all I can see (on O'Reilly) is a
       | revised reprint from 2012.
       | 
       | Also, if you sign up is this then only for this book's
       | discussion?
        
         | eatonphil wrote:
         | I included the ISBN on the page. :) 9780124159501
         | 
         | Yes this is only for this book's discussion. The broader
         | mailing list is on /bookclub.html. And that mailing list is
         | used just to stay in the loop about future readings (and votes
         | on future readings).
        
         | Jtsummers wrote:
         | https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780124159501/the-art-of-...
         | - This is the current edition.
         | 
         | I'm only comparing the TOCs here:
         | 
         | Chapters 1-6 have, unless I missed something, the same chapter
         | topics and section titles.
         | 
         | Chapter 7 seems to be reorganized a bit and adds an exercises
         | section.
         | 
         | Chapters 8 - 16 have one extra section for exercises each, I'm
         | not seeing (quick review) any other differences in section
         | names.
         | 
         | Chapter 17 becomes Chapter 18, adds an exercises section.
         | 
         | Chapter 18 becomes Chapter 20, several additional sections.
         | 
         | So the earlier edition is missing Chapter 17 "Data parallelism"
         | and Chapter 19 "Optimism and manual memory management" from the
         | newer edition. Only the missing Chapter 17 would impact the
         | reading group plan since it is covering chapters 1-18.
        
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       (page generated 2025-08-02 23:00 UTC)