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🚀 How to Write a Simple Money Transfer Service That Is Thread-Safe and Lock-Free

Halil Ural
7 min readSep 29, 2024

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Photo by Eugen (Baeldung)

Money transfer services are at the core of the modern financial system, making sure that billions of transactions occur seamlessly across the globe 🌍. But when you delve into the actual code behind such services, one of the most challenging aspects is ensuring thread safety without compromising performance. Thread-safe programming, particularly in concurrent systems, comes with complexities — especially when you try to implement it without locks.

In this article, we’ll break down the principles behind building a simple, thread-safe, and lock-free money transfer service 💸. This can serve as a foundation for understanding the core of highly performant systems used by fintech giants.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” — Leonardo da Vinci

Table of Contents

· Why Thread Safety and Lock-Free Programming Matter 🔒
· Basics of Thread-Safe Design 🧵
· Atomic Operations for Money Transfers ⚛️
· The Role of Compare-And-Swap (CAS) 🛠️
· Implementing a Simple Lock-Free Transfer Service 💻
· Testing for Correctness and Performance 🎯
· Conclusion: Thread Safety Without Locking? You Got This! 🎉
· Read More

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Halil Ural
Halil Ural

Written by Halil Ural

Tech writer and software engineer exploring system design, AI. Sharing insights and knowledge to inspire and educate. 🚀 Email: halilural5@gmail.com

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