Can a shared method be multithreaded?

Question

As the question states, can a shared method of an object be multithreaded? I don't quite having threading down in my skillset, otherwise I would test myself. On the other hand, I am involved in designing class that could be part of a multithreaded application in VB.Net.

Answer 1

If you mean "is it safe for a shared method to be called from multiple threads at once" - the answer is "it depends". A method itself isn't multi-threaded or single-threaded; threads and methods are very separate things.

If your shared method is called from multiple threads, then unless there's any synchronization to say otherwise, it will be executed concurrently on those threads. That can definitely cause a problem if your method uses shared state without appropriate safeguards. However, if the method either takes care when accessing shared resources (e.g. using locks) or it doesn't access any state which is shared between threads, that's fine.