What are the so-called "levels" of understanding multithreading?

Posted by Dan Tao on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Dan Tao
Published on 2011-02-03T21:40:17Z Indexed on 2011/02/03 23:34 UTC
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multi-threading

I seem to remember reading somewhere some list of 4 "levels" of understanding multithreading. This may have been in a formal publication, or it may have been in an extremely informal context (even like in a Stack Overflow question, for example). Unfortunately I don't remember who referred to them or precisely what they were.

I seem to recall that they were roughly like:

Total ignorance
Awareness mixed with incompetence
Relative competence mixed with fear
True understanding

My intention is to refer to these levels in a blog post I'm writing, with a reference; but I can't for the life of me remember where I first encountered this list. Brief Google searches have proved unfruitful.

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