What is the trade-off between thread safety and performance in programming?

What is the trade-off between thread safety and performance in programming?

The trade-off between thread safety and performance often involves balancing the need for safe concurrent access to resources with the overhead that comes from implementing synchronization mechanisms.

Can you give me an example of where this trade-off is significant?

Sure! In a multi-threaded web server, using locks to ensure thread safety can slow down request handling, while avoiding locks can lead to race conditions.

How can I achieve both thread safety and good performance?

You can use techniques like lock-free programming, thread-local storage, or fine-grained locking to improve performance while maintaining thread safety.

Are there specific programming languages that handle this better?

Languages like Go and Rust have built-in features that promote safe concurrency, making it easier to achieve both thread safety and performance.