Rafael Trindade

Concurrency is 𝗡𝗢𝗧 Parallelism. These terms are often used interchangeably. But they describe very different ideas. As Rob Pike (one of the creators of Go) put it: 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆 is about 𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 lots of things at once. 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗺 is about 𝙙𝙤𝙞𝙣𝙜 lots of things at once. Here’s the difference in practice: Concurrency ↳ Multiple tasks are in progress. ↳ Work is interleaved to use resources efficiently Parallelism ↳ Multiple tasks are executing simultaneously ↳ Work happens at the same time across cores or systems In other words: concurrency helps manage complexity, while parallelism increases throughput. But switching only stays cheap when the scheduler knows which task is ready. An event loop doesn't check every connection in turn: the OS tells it which ones have data. With coding agents running in parallel, the scheduler is you. Opening each session to see whether it's done, stuck or waiting on input is the expensive way to switch. JetBrains Air in IDEs applies the same idea. It runs sessions from the agents you choose across your open projects, and tracks unread updates, changed files and outgoing commits in one place, so your attention goes where it's needed. 𝗧𝗿𝘆 𝗔𝗶𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗝𝗲𝘁𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝗜𝗗𝗘, 𝗳𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮 𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗲 𝗟𝗶𝘁𝗲 → lucode.co/jetbrains-air-in-i… What else would you add? —— ♻️ Repost to help others learn and grow. 🙏 Thanks to @jetbrains for sponsoring this post. ➕ Follow me ( Nikki Siapno ) to improve at system design and AI.