Not long ago, I had the chance to attend the B-JUG#14 meetup titled “Organizing Chaos – Structured Concurrency.” It was a very interesting event that gathered programming enthusiasts from Białystok. The focus was on the concept of structured concurrency, especially in the context of the new Java 21 release.
The speaker, Konrad Szałkowski, presented the challenges of multitasking in programming in a fascinating way and explained how structured concurrency can help developers “manage” the chaos caused by creating many threads in applications. He illustrated this well with an analogy to a child’s room after a birthday party – a mess among new toys that needs to be cleaned up. Similarly, in Java, although virtual threads seem easy to use, creating too many can lead to problems. The presentation was excellent, the best I’ve been to. The speaker talked calmly but clearly, and didn’t need a microphone.
Structured Concurrency is a tool that helps manage concurrency better, giving developers control over complexity, and bringing order to chaos. The presentation was clear, and Konrad showed working code that nicely illustrated the new possibilities of this API. I must say that the code examples he showed were really great and well thought out. He explained multithreading very simply. A big plus for the overall introduction to the topic, which made it easier to understand concurrent programming and the problems that come with working with multiple threads.
After the lecture, we had the chance to talk and exchange experiences. As always, the atmosphere at B-JUG meetups was friendly and encouraged discussions on technical topics. The pizza was great too, and I really liked the new venue for this meetup.
This meeting reminded me how important it is to bring order where it seems impossible. Structured Concurrency in Java is a great tool that will definitely become a permanent part of my programming toolkit.
I’m looking forward to the next meetups and the opportunity to explore new technologies!