Writing Multithreaded Code Is Like Juggling Chainsaws

Tim Newman, a commercial director and cousin of Grammy-winning musician Randy Newman, asked if I could juggle chainsaws? In my naïve enthusiasm I said sure. I had opened my big mouth and the clock was ticking, with only 10 days to figure out how to juggle a live chainsaw without seriously injuring or killing myself. The first four days I was so nervous that I wouldn’t even start the chainsaw. Finally I pulled the cord and on my first attempt, I missed. The chainsaw hit the ground and went crazy, buzzing at full speed. Two policemen ran up and asked, “What the hell are you doing, kid?” I explained my dire situation and they thought it was cool. They began cheering me on. They wanted to see me do it!

On shoot day I show up for the commercial and get prepared. I fire up the chainsaw and Tim Newman says, “Whoa, what are you doing?” Long story short, after 10 days of practice, I find out they didn’t want the chainsaw running during the commercial (insurance won’t cover a stunt like that). The plan was to just add the sound effect in post-production. I felt a little stupid but it turned out to be the best mistake I ever made. The seed had been planted and soon I was juggling three saws at the same time. No one in Venice was doing a more extreme act.

There is a lesson about requirements gathering in there somewhere, and probably one about stepping outside your comfort zone.

Whole article: http://www.venicebeachbook.com/vbb2c.html

I'd like to point out that the use of immutable data structures solves some threading issues. Unfortunately, as in this example, it's easy to get hung up somewhere in your technology stack without realizing what's going on.