Fiber for cooperative concurrency in Ruby - Cheat Sheet & Quick Revision

Recall & Review

beginner

What is a Fiber in Ruby?

A Fiber is a lightweight concurrency tool in Ruby that allows you to pause and resume code execution manually, enabling cooperative multitasking.

intermediate

How does Fiber differ from Thread in Ruby?

Fibers are cooperative, meaning they yield control explicitly, while Threads are preemptive and managed by the Ruby scheduler. Fibers are lighter and do not run in parallel.

beginner

What method is used to start or resume a Fiber?

The Fiber#resume method is used to start or continue execution of a Fiber from where it last yielded.

beginner

What does Fiber.yield do?

Fiber.yield pauses the current Fiber and returns control to the caller, allowing cooperative multitasking.

intermediate

Why is Fiber considered cooperative concurrency?

Because Fibers only switch control when they explicitly yield, unlike threads which can be interrupted at any time by the scheduler.

Which method starts or resumes a Fiber in Ruby?

A Fiber#begin

B Fiber#start

C Fiber#run

D Fiber#resume

Fiber#resume is the correct method to start or continue a Fiber.

What happens when Fiber.yield is called?

A The Fiber blocks other Fibers

B The Fiber pauses and returns control to the caller

C The Fiber runs in a new thread

D The Fiber terminates immediately

Fiber.yield pauses the Fiber and returns control to the caller, enabling cooperative multitasking.

Fibers in Ruby are best described as:

A Cooperative concurrency units

B Preemptive threads

C Parallel processes

D Synchronous functions

Fibers require explicit yielding, so they are cooperative concurrency units.

Which of the following is NOT true about Fibers?

A They run in parallel on multiple CPU cores

B They allow manual control of execution flow

C They are lighter than threads

D They use <code>Fiber.yield</code> to pause execution

Fibers do not run in parallel; they run cooperatively on a single thread.

What is the main advantage of using Fibers?

A Simplifies multi-thread synchronization

B Automatic parallel execution

C Efficient cooperative multitasking with low overhead

D Runs code asynchronously without yielding

Fibers provide efficient cooperative multitasking with less overhead than threads.

Explain how Fibers enable cooperative concurrency in Ruby.

Think about how Fibers pause themselves and let others run.

Describe the difference between Fibers and Threads in Ruby.

Consider how control is passed in Fibers vs Threads.