10 Best Java Multithreading and Concurrency Courses for Experienced Programmers in 2024
These are the best and free online courses to learn multithreading and concurrency in Java from Udemy, Coursera, and Educative.
If you are a Java developer and looking for awesome books and courses to improve your multi-threading and concurrency skills in Java then you have come to the right place.
In the past, I have shared the best books and tutorials on Java Concurrency and Multithreading, and in this article, I am going to talk about the best free and paid courses to learn multithreading and concurrency in Java. You can join these free courses to improve your understanding of Java Concurrency and Multithreading.
It’s one of the most important skills for Java developers as almost all the companies who interview Java developers pay particular attention to their knowledge and experience in this area.
If you are aiming for a job in big Investment banks like Citibank, Deutsche Bank, or Barclays or in service-based companies like Infosys, TCS, Luxsoft, and others, you must have a strong command of multithreading and concurrency concepts in Java.
What are Multithreading and Concurrency? Why it’s important?
Executing a Java program using multiple threads is commonly known as multi-threading. This is generally done to improve the throughput and performance of your application, especially if are doing a lot of CPU-intensive tasks.
Since CPU is a scarce resource but many programs leave CPU underused, by leveraging multiple threads you get an option to make full use of CPU and increase the throughput of your Java application.
When Java first came into the scene, its ability to execute programs on multiple threads got the attention. The Java Programming language has built-in support in terms of synchronized and volatile keywords for executing programs in multiple threads.
Though multithreading is not easy because when the same piece of code is executed by multiple threads, a lot of data and control-related issues happen like deadlock, livelock, race conditions, etc.
It’s seriously difficult to get the concurrency right for the very first time, hence a Java developer should have a good understanding of different multi-threading and concurrency concepts before writing a multi-threaded and concurrent Java application.
These are the skills you generally learn on the job but nowadays people expect you to know before you come for an interview and that’s where these Java courses and books can help you.
They provide the much-needed foundation and real-world examples to build the thread fundamentals and other multithreading concepts and terminology.
Top 10 Online Courses to learn Multithreading and Concurrency in Java in 2024
Without any further ado, here is my list of some of the best courses to learn multithreading and concurrency in Java.
The list includes both free and paid courses, as well as courses for both beginners and experienced Java programmers, so even if you have some background, you can use these courses to fill the gaps in your learning and become a master of Java Concurrency and Multithreading.
1. Java Multithreading, Concurrency, and Performance Optimization
Multithreading and Concurrency is one of the most sought-after skills for Java developers. There is a high demand for Java developers who understand Multithreading and Concurrency well, but at the same time, this is one of the difficult topics to master.
If you want to take your Concurrency skills to the next level and want to become an expert in Multithreading, Concurrency, and Parallel programming in Java, with a strong emphasis on high performance, then I highly recommend this course to you.
There is a reason I kept it in the first position because this is probably the most important course on this list and highly recommend every Java developer to go through it.
Here is the link to join this course — Java Multithreading, Concurrency, and Performance Optimization
2. Parallel, Concurrent, and Distributed Programming in Java [Coursera]
This is an advanced Java course to learn Parallel programming, Concurrent applications, and Distributed Programming in Java from Coursera, a leading online learning portal that brings the best courses from the world’s reputed companies (Google, IBM) and universities (Stanford, Duke, Rice ) online.
This specialization is offered by Rice University and is best for both experienced developers and beginners with a basic knowledge of sequential programming in Java, who is motivated to learn how to write parallel, concurrent, and distributed programs.
The specialization contains three courses (which may be taken in any order or separately) and you can use them to learn foundational topics in Parallelism, Concurrency, and Distribution.
Here are the three courses which forms this specialization:
Parallel, concurrent, and distributed programming is very important for Java applications in multiple domains, ranging from biomedical research to financial services and these courses will prepare you for multithreaded and distributed programming for a wide range of computer platforms, from mobile devices to cloud computing servers.
Here is the link to join this Coursera course — Parallel, Concurrent, and Distributed Programming in Java
By the way, If you are planning to join multiple Coursera courses or specializations then consider taking a Coursera Plus subscription which provides you unlimited access to their most popular courses, specialization, professional certificate, and guided projects.
3. Applying Concurrency and Multi-threading to Common Patterns [Pluralsight Best Course]
This is an excellent course on Multithreading and Concurrency, particularly for experienced Java developers. In this course, instructor Jose Paumard explains how to write correct multithreaded code using Java APIs.
In this course, you will learn all the threading fundamentals you will need to write production-quality multi-threaded code in Java.
You will learn about the problems of concurrent programming on multicore CPUs like deadlock, race conditions, livelock, and data corruption.
Next, you will learn how your application reads data from the main memory and CPU caches and how false sharing can cause slower performance.
Finally, you will learn about the Java Memory Model and the notion of happens-before, the most important concept from the Java program’s point of view.
Here is the link to join this multi-threading course — Applying Concurrency and Multi-threading to Common Patterns
By the way, you would need a Pluralsight membership to join this course which costs around $29 per month or $299 per year but they are offering now a 40% discount and you can get this for just $176.
I highly recommend this subscription to all programmers as it provides instant access to more than 7000+ online courses to learn any tech skill. Alternatively, you can also use their 10-day-free-pass to watch this course for FREE.
4. Java Concurrency in Practice Bundle (Javaespecialist)
This is one of the best, most in-depth, and the classic Java concurrency course from a Java Champion and renowned Core Java trainer, Dr. Heinz M. Kabutz, the founder of javaespecialist.
This is one of the most comprehensive and advanced courses on Java Concurrency and a must join for experienced professionals, particularly those who are working in high-performance domains.
The course is a bundle of three main materials what is relevant to someone who wants to master concurrency:
1. Threading Essentials
2. Data Structures
3. Extreme Java — Concurrency Performance.
In short, an advanced course for Java developers who are serious about Concurrency and Multithreading skills.
Here is the link to join this concurrency course — Java Concurrency in Practice Bundle
The Extreme Java — Concurrency Performance course is loosely based on the classic book by Brian Goetz and company, the Java Concurrency in Practice but brought up to speed for modern constructs from Java 8 and 9 like lambdas, fork-join pool, Phaser, and other advanced constructs.
5. Multithreading and Parallel Computing in Java [Udemy Course]
This is another awesome Java Concurrency and Multithreading course from Udemy but it’s not free. Its normal price is around $200 but you can get it for just $9.99 on several of Udemy’s flash sales, which is almost free.
The course is exhaustive as compared to the previous course and covers more topics and patterns with some real-life examples.
Apart from the basics of multi-threading like threads, lock, synchronization, blocking, etc, you will learn about Concurrent Collections which can simplify some concurrency design patterns.
For example, it’s very easy to implement the Producer-Consumer pattern using BlockingQueue class as compared to a normal Collection with the wait and notify as shown here.
This course discusses CountDowLatch, CyclicBarrier, Blocking Queue, Delay Queue, PriorityQueue, Exchanger, and concurrent maps like ConcurrentHashMap.
Apart from Producer-Consumer, this course also explains the Dining Philosopher Problem and demonstrates two simulation projects i.e. Student Libary Simulation and Minor Game Simulation, which will allow you to apply the knowledge you learn.
Here is the link to join this course — Multithreading and Parallel Computing in Java
The course also covers some advanced concepts like Parallel Algorithm, Fork-Join Frameworks, and MapReduce patterns. Overall a perfect course for an experienced Java developer to augment his knowledge on this topic.
6. Efficient Java Multithreading with Executors (Udemy)
This is another nice course to learn advanced Java multithreading on Udemy. This course particularly focuses on the Executor framework which was introduced to Java 5 and takes away the pain and issues of creating and managing threads from the developer.
If you have worked in a multi-threaded application before then you know that creating new threads at the time of request processing can slow you down and that’s why it’s better to use a pool of threads to process the request.
Java solves this problem by introducing the Executor framework in JDK 1.5 which provides the infrastructure and API you need to create and manage a thread pool.
Apart from the Executor Framework, you will also learn about some basics of threading like naming threads for debugging, terminating threads, handling the uncaught exception, scheduling tasks, etc.
Here is the link to join this Java course — Efficient Java Multithreading with Executors
In short, a fantastic course to fill gaps in your Java Concurrency and Multithreading knowledge. You can join this course along with reading Java Concurrency in Practice book by Brian Goetz and the team to get the best of both worlds.
7. Java Multithreading (FREE Java Course on Udemy)
This is a free course to learn multithreading in Java and you can join it on Udemy, the biggest platform for online courses. This is a nice fundamental course which without being too comprehensive, tells you everything you need to read and write concurrent code using Java libraries.
In this course you will learn about starting and stopping threads, basic thread synchronization using the synchronized keyword, locking, thread pools, wait and notify, callable and future, and several other concurrency utilities introduced in Java 5 e.g. CountDownLatch and Semaphores.
The course also discusses common concurrency patterns like Producer-Consumer and common multithreading problems like deadlock and how to avoid it while writing Java code.
You will also learn a bit about interrupting Threads and using Multithreading in Swing with SwingWorker. Overall, a great course to start learning Java Multithreading and best of all, it’s FREE.
Here is the link to join this free course — Java Multithreading
8. Practical Java concurrency with the Akka Actor Model (Udemy)
This is another advanced Java multithreading course on Udemy to learn how to avoid thread-safety issues, synchronization, and blocking in Java applications using the Akka Actor Model of Scala in Java. You don’t need to learn Scala.
This course will teach you how to use the Actor Model provided by the Akka framework to build robust, thread-safe concurrent applications with Java.
Instead of creating threads, worrying about thread-safe variables, using synchronization and locks, learn how the actor model gives us a completely different way to approach concurrent programming.
The course is full of practical real-world scenarios — you’ll even build a basic blockchain mining application.
Worth noting is that although Akka is built in Scala, no Scala knowledge is needed for this course — the course covers Akka with Java and we won’t be writing any Scala code.
Here is the link to join this course — Practical Java concurrency with the Akka Actor Model
9. Java Multithreading for Senior Engineering Interviews [Educative]
This one is another fantastic course to level up your multithreading and concurrency skills, particularly for Java interviews.
Concurrency in Java is one of the most complex and advanced topics brought up during senior engineering interviews. Knowledge of concurrency and multithreading can put interviewees at a considerable advantage.
This course lays the foundations of advanced concurrency and multithreading and explains concepts such as Monitors and Deferred Callbacks in depth.
It also builds simple and complete solutions to popular concurrency problems that can be asked about in interviews like the Reader-Writer Problem and the Dining Philosopher Problem.
Here is the link to join this course — Java Multithreading for Senior Engineering Interviews
And, if you like Educative as a platform, and particularly their coding interview courses like Grokking the System Design then you can also get a subscription for just $14. 96 per month (56% discount from $39.9), I have one, and I highly recommend you to get one.
That’s all about the best Java Multithreading and Concurrency course for experienced Java developers. I have included both free and paid courses for your reference, you can choose whatever you like. Sometimes starting with a free resource is a good idea, but I would suggest the course you liked.
As you may know, multi-threading and concurrency are very useful skills and there are a lot of exciting opportunities for developers who understand this better, particularly in large investment banks.
If you are looking for your next job the time and money invested in learning Concurrency and Multithreading concepts will reap you good rewards in the future.
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My favorite free Java Concurrency courses for beginners
Thanks for reading this article so far. If you like these best Java Multithreading and Concurrency courses then please share them with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback then please drop a note.
P. S. — If you have just started with Java Programming or looking for some free courses to start with Java Programming, you can also check out this list of free Java Programming courses for beginners.
P. P. S. — If you want to do just one thing at this moment I suggest go have a look at the Java Multithreading, Concurrency, and Performance Optimization course on Udemy. Watch preview lessons and start your journey to become a Java Concurrency expert.
