In computer science, the dining philosophers problem is an example problem often used in concurrent algorithm design to illustrate synchronization issues and techniques for resolving them.
It was originally formulated in 1965 by Edsger Dijkstra as a student exam exercise, in terms of computers competing for access to tape drive peripherals. Soon after, Tony Hoare gave the problem its present formulation.
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“I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage, with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post which any human power can give.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“These philosophers dwell on the inevitability and unchangeableness of laws, on the power of temperament and constitution, the three goon, or qualities, and the circumstances, or birth and affinity. The end is an immense consolation; eternal absorption in Brahma.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)