Approaching the readers-writers problem

The readers-writers problem is one of the classic use cases in concurrent programming, illustrating problems that might occur in a concurrent program. Throughout the analysis of the different variations of the readers-writers problem, we will reveal more about starvation, as well as its common causes. We will also simulate the problem in Python so that a deeper understanding of the problem can be gained.

Problem statement

In a readers-writers problem, first and foremost, we have a shared resource, which, in most cases, is a text file. Different threads interact with that text file; each is either a reader or a writer. A reader is a thread that simply accesses the shared resource (the text file) and reads in the data included in that file, while a writer is a thread that accesses, and possibly mutates, the contents of the text file.

We know that writers and readers cannot access the shared resources simultaneously since if a thread is...