Advantages and Problems with Mutex
Explore how mutex provides a safer and lighter alternative to synchronized blocks by suspending coroutines instead of blocking threads. Understand common challenges such as deadlocks and delays caused by improper mutex use. Learn best practices for managing shared state in Kotlin coroutines with solutions like fine-grained thread confinement and dispatcher-limited single threads to optimize concurrency control.
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Advantage
The vital advantage of mutex over a synchronized block is that we suspend a coroutine instead of blocking a thread; this is a safer and lighter approach. Compared to using a dispatcher with parallelism limited to a single thread, a mutex is lighter, and in some cases, it might offer better performance.
Problems
On the other hand, it’s also harder to use it properly. ...