No progress.

What this concurrency interview question tests

This is an easy concurrency question that probes whether you can recognize and name a classic synchronization failure mode. Interviewers ask it to confirm you understand not just how locks work, but the pathological scenarios that arise when multiple threads interact poorly with shared resources.

The question rewards clarity of definition and the ability to distinguish between related but distinct concepts. Strong candidates can explain the phenomenon in plain terms, describe how it arises in code, and discuss practical mitigation strategies. This is foundational knowledge for anyone writing multi-threaded systems or debugging concurrency issues in production.

• Lock acquisition and release semantics
• Thread scheduling and fairness
• Distinguishing deadlock, livelock, and starvation
• Prevention and detection strategies