As software applications grow in complexity, the need for efficient concurrency management becomes increasingly important. Traditional threading models can be resource-intensive and difficult to manage, especially when dealing with a large number of threads. This challenge has led to the development of virtual threads, a lightweight alternative that simplifies concurrent programming.
In this article, we will explore the concept of virtual threads from a developer-agnostic perspective, discussing their benefits and potential use cases. While our examples will focus on Java 21 and Project Loom, the concepts discussed are applicable to other languages and platforms that support similar lightweight concurrency models.