Two Ways To Thread

• There are two ways to thread, depending upon the operating system.
• Preemptive multitasking: the operating system interrupts the task without asking it first.  (Unix and variants, modern Windows).
• Cooperative, or non-preemptive: the operating system is only interrupted when it yeilds control. (Win 3.1x and Mac OS, (even though you can't run Java on Win 3.1x (who really uses that anymore anyway? (Do I have enough close quotes here? (It's getting late in the Jones household, if you can't tell.))))
• An important side note:
• Though Java is known as the write once, run anywhere language, this is one time where you might see different results on different operating systems.
• Why?  Different operating systems implement native threading different ways.  The way threads are handled, the way they get priority, the way they are selected for execution, etc.
• Thus, as always, it is a good idea to test on every platform upon which users might use your system.


 What Are Threads?

Created by:  Brandan Jones December 17, 2001