I know a little thread programming, not much I would say, but I know how it works, the difference on threads and processes, how to create, run and dealing with mutexes ... basic stuff, not anything advanced really because I have worked very little with it. I have a little experience with pthreads, doing some work on linux, and I know a bit about the win32 thread stuff. I also have been doing a bit basic thread programming in java. But when I am finished with my exams, I'm going to have a relaxing holyday, and then start thinking about programming some c++ and experimenting. I don't program much in linux, and hardly care about it. So using win32 exclusivly is actually ok for my part. But I was wondering if there is better thread libraries around, either better than win32 and/or are multiplatform. I don't have any ideas of starting to make programs that are multiplatform, but it would be nice to get used to a library that makes programming better, and if I one day would make something for another platform, then I could do so using the same knowledge instead of having to get used to yet-another-library. Something tells me that I should start learning c# and the stuff that goes with it, rather than sticking with c++. I'm just sceptical of nature. Don't like to get too know only windows ... but that is what I am practically doing.

You might want to look into OpenMP. VS2k5 supports it (must be the only thing with 'open' in the name that MS supports). I haven't looked into it in much details, but seemed like a nifty cross-platform way of dealing with threads and parallel processing.

Interesting, didn't thought ms would ever implement anything open ... but this is cool.

Since the new VS is free, I might download it and try it. I haven't tried the eclipse c++ ide, but the java verison is good. But I don't think eclipse supports openMP. I was looking for openMP libs, but couldn't find any .. but then again, it is late and I have to google later.

thx alot

OpenMP isn't supported by the MSVC .NET 2005 Express Edition; in order to use OpenMP you need to get Standard or better.

I'll second Boost.Threads -- At the very least it's worth a try, since you should have Boost installed anyways :P

It is more limited than many other libraries, but that isn't all bad: it keeps you to portable techniques and doesn't offer some of the most dangerous constructs. The scoped locking is also a very good practical lesson in the usefulness of RAII for things other than memory and how it's useful even if you're not using exceptions.