Single Threaded Processing

Single threaded processing is a programming model where a process or application executes instructions sequentially in a single thread of execution, handling one task at a time from start to finish without concurrency. It simplifies program flow by avoiding complexities like race conditions and synchronization issues common in multi-threaded systems. This model is foundational in many scripting languages and event-driven architectures, where operations are queued and processed in order.

Also known as: Single-threaded, Single Threaded, Sequential Processing, Non-concurrent Processing, STP

Why learn Single Threaded Processing?

Developers should learn single threaded processing for scenarios where simplicity, predictability, and ease of debugging are priorities, such as in simple scripts, I/O-bound tasks with non-blocking operations (e.g., Node.js), or environments with limited resources. It's essential for understanding core programming concepts before advancing to multi-threading, and it's widely used in web servers handling requests via event loops to manage concurrency without threads.

Learning Resources

• docs: MDN Web Docs: Concurrency model and the event loop
• docs: Node.js Guide: The Node.js Event Loop
• video: YouTube: What the heck is the event loop anyway?
• tutorial: FreeCodeCamp: Understanding the JavaScript Event Loop
• book: Book: 'Node.js Design Patterns' by Mario Casciaro