Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

By who's definition? If you go by Padua's classic definition, it's any behaviour that depends on timing sequences. For example HN has a race condition in that the ID your comment gets allocated depends on when it's submitted. But that's not a bug, is it? It only becomes a bug when it's undesirable. I think, like a few people here, you're confusing it with a 'data race'.

View on HN

You still understand, though, that the colloquial definition being used here is what you're referring to as a "data race." Your comments are disingenuous in that I believe you know that you're being pedantic, I just don't know why you've brought it up the multiple times.

I didn't realise something as specific as 'race condition' could have a colloquial definition, but ok.

For many terms of (programming) jargon, there's a strict academic definition, perhaps as defined in a paper in which the term was originally introduced, and the usage of the word in the broader (programming) community.

The latter is the colloquial definition.

I feel like this comment is a classic example of reading a wikipedia entry instead of understanding the topic.

You can use it to refer to any race, but in reality the race you are referring to is only subjective to the user. The server is generally processing all requests in the order they are received.

A race condition usually is referring to a multithreaded system where the threads interfere with each other, causing undesired effects.

Relaxing "race condition" to refer to all causality... is such a loose definition as to give it no meaning at all.

> I feel like this comment is a classic example of reading a wikipedia entry instead of understanding the topic

I did a PhD partially on irregular parallelism where understanding race conditions are essential for understanding the topic.

Didn't we go over this already? It's not any behavior that depends on timing sequences, it's only if your code assumes it can rely on timing sequences while it can't, i.e. a bug.

> It's not any behavior that depends on timing sequences,

That's literally how 'race condition' is defined in the industry.

Not true, it's pretty hard to encounter anyone in the industry using the phrase "race condition" without implying a bug.

what? You need to describe what you’re saying better. How is an ID allocated a comment a “race condition”. A race condition desirable or not has to be related to some sequence of events.. ie its a race with a particular set of outcomes. What you’re describing sounds like basic cause and effect.

Event A is your comment. Event B is my comment. If your comment gets to the server first if gets ID 1. If mine gets to the server first it gets ID 1. Which ID you get depends on timing outside your control. They race to get the ID. A race condition.

So what? What’s missing is that unless something depends on the ordering of those ids, it really isn’t a race condition. Just plain happening of events is the inevitable passage of time, not a race condition. What is interesting about what happens downstream with those IDs?

You’re not wrong that not all race conditions are harmful, but i feel you’re doing a pretty bad job of explaining what a race condition is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com