Conceptual questions involve programming problems which are not related to program code itself, but with algorithm logic and program architecture.
Questions tagged [conceptual]
364 questions
221
votes
6 answers
What's the difference between Task.Start/Wait and Async/Await?
I may be missing something but what is the difference between doing:
public void MyMethod()
{
Task t = Task.Factory.StartNew(DoSomethingThatTakesTime);
t.Wait();
UpdateLabelToSayItsComplete();
}
public async void MyMethod()
{
var result =…

Jon
- 38,814
- 81
- 233
- 382
78
votes
14 answers
Post-increment and Pre-increment concept?
I don't understand the concept of postfix and prefix increment or decrement. Can anyone give a better explanation?

Saad Masood
- 11,036
- 9
- 32
- 40
75
votes
5 answers
Why is TaskScheduler.Current the default TaskScheduler?
The Task Parallel Library is great and I've used it a lot in the past months. However, there's something really bothering me: the fact that TaskScheduler.Current is the default task scheduler, not TaskScheduler.Default. This is absolutely not…

Julien Lebosquain
- 40,639
- 8
- 105
- 117
62
votes
4 answers
Abstract Class vs. Interface
I have searched around SO as well as the rest of the web for a good answer but I have't found one that I really understand. I am going to present this in a different way and hopefully the answers will help others as well.
As far as I understand,…

nathanjosiah
- 4,441
- 4
- 35
- 47
48
votes
3 answers
What is the conceptual difference between SynchronizationContext and TaskScheduler
Stephen Toub blogged that
Both SynchronizationContext and TaskScheduler are abstractions that
represent a “scheduler”, something that you give some work to, and it
determines when and where to run that work. There are many different
forms of…

Michael Kariv
- 1,421
- 13
- 20
41
votes
13 answers
Real Life Examples For CountDownLatch and CyclicBarrier
One example is given by one of our trainers when he was explaining difference between CountDownLatch and CyclicBarrier.
CountDownLatch: Suppose a stone can be lifted by 10 people so you will wait for all 10 to come. Then only you can lift the…

Sunny Gupta
- 6,929
- 15
- 52
- 80
39
votes
5 answers
REST API Design: Nested Collection vs. New Root
This question is about optimal REST API design and a problem I'm facing to choose between nested resources and root level collections.
To demonstrate the concept, suppose I have collections City, Business, and Employees. A typical API may be…

Alex
- 75,813
- 86
- 255
- 348
35
votes
1 answer
What is the difference between SynchronizationContext.Send and SynchronizationContext.Post?
Thanks to Jeremy Miller's good work in Functional Programming For Everyday .NET Development, I have a working command executor that does everything I want it to (do heavy lifting on the thread pool, send results or errors back to the synchronization…

flipdoubt
- 13,897
- 15
- 64
- 96
30
votes
2 answers
Understanding context in C# 5 async/await
Am I correct that async/await itself has nothing to do with concurrency/parallelism and is nothing more than continuation-passing style (CPS) implementation? And the real threading is performed by SynchronizationContext instance that await…

UserControl
- 14,766
- 20
- 100
- 187
29
votes
3 answers
How to show usage of static methods UML Class Diagram
How do i show the use of static methods in a UML class diagram?
class A{
public static void test(){
}
}
class B{
public void b(){
A.test();
}
}
How would a class diagram look like, which shows the relationship? UML 2.0 would…

Nicolas
- 950
- 1
- 7
- 15
27
votes
3 answers
How to force subclasses to set a variable in java?
I have a class which defines all of the basic parameters for a given screen. From here every screen in the application is a subclass of this. I need every screen (i.e. subclass) to set the value of a variable in its implementation (namely, each…

btalb
- 6,937
- 11
- 36
- 44
26
votes
1 answer
The async and await keywords don't cause additional threads to be created?
I'm confused. How can one or many Task run in parallel on a single thread? My understanding of parallelism is obviously wrong.
Bits of MSDN I can't wrap my head around:
The async and await keywords don't cause additional threads to be
created.…

maxbeaudoin
- 6,546
- 5
- 38
- 53
24
votes
3 answers
Finding items in an universal hash table?
If items are organized randomly, how does the table know where to start looking?
In a non-random table items are organized according to some characteristic. (i.e. name). So if the table needs to look up some arbitrary information about "John", it…

fdh
- 5,256
- 13
- 58
- 101
22
votes
3 answers
Why aren't method references singleton?
In Java, the following code returns false on both queries. Why? Wouldn't it be simpler for method references to be singleton? It would certainly make attaching and detaching listeners a lot simpler. As it is you need to keep a constant for any…

Dimitriye98
- 207
- 2
- 10
22
votes
3 answers
I/O performance - async vs TPL vs Dataflow vs RX
I have a piece of C# 5.0 code that generates a ton of network and disk I/O. I need to run multiple copies of this code in parallel. Which of the following technologies is likely to give me the best performance:
async methods with await
directly use…

Eliezer Kohen
- 469
- 1
- 4
- 9