Screaming Zombies and Other Tales: Race Condition Woes - Joshua Larson

What is the sound of a zombie screaming? Race conditions are a problem that crop up everywhere. This talk will go over what a race condition is, and what it takes for a system to be vulnerable to them. Then we’ll walk through four stories of race conditions in production, including one that we named the “Screaming Zombies” bug. You’ll leave this talk with a greater appreciation for how to build and analyze concurrent systems, and several fun stories for how things can go amusingly wrong. And if you were wondering about the question at the top, the answer is: Silence Josh Larson Josh is a full-time programmer, part-time human, whose interests include weird programming, physics, math, and trying to make software reliably be better. When he’s not writing code or equations, he’s probably biking somewhere or watching something on HBO.