Demystifying Ruby Concurrency: Processes, Ractors, Threads, and Fibers

Ruby, known for its elegance and readability, presents a concurrency model that can be initially confusing. This article delves into the four concurrency mechanisms in Ruby: processes, Ractors, threads, and fibers. Processes offer complete memory isolation, ideal for tasks requiring absolute separation; Ractors, introduced in Ruby 3, provide parallelism within a single process, employing message passing to prevent race conditions; threads, being lightweight, are limited by the GIL to concurrency, not true parallelism; and fibers, the lightest mechanism, offer cooperative multitasking through manual control yielding. Code examples and clear explanations illuminate the differences and use cases, providing a comprehensive understanding of Ruby's intricate concurrency landscape.