Threading

I’d love to do lots of real time stuff, but like I’ve said before, I stink at threaded code.  But then I asked Google, and it gave me some interesting stuff.  But the real question is simple: why do I want to write multi-threaded code?

Think of this: A program is running, looking through a file.  Rather than displaying the old swirling toilet bowl of Windows 7, have the information that is being processed displayed on the screen.   Or better yet, a program collects information from various system logs.  The program looks at the syslog, and determines if something needs to be done based on what the syslog said.

An example of this is getting a message saying someone logged onto a router.  If someone logs on to a router, we probably want to inform the system administrator of the log on.  Only certain people should be logging in to a router.  A second example would be identifying when a cable is plugged into a switch in a public location.  Or, as a general rule you would want info on a certain circumstances. 

But information is coming in constantly, so information needs to be processed rapidly.  And a bunch of that information is going to be seen as junk and written to the logs.  That information needs to be processed as fast as possible because information is constantly entering any syslog system. 

Hence, multiple threads.  The idea is simple, but the execution… not so much.   Maybe that’s why I’m not a professional programmer.  Eh well.  Maybe I’ll figure it out one day.  Just not today.