Lesson 4 - Daemons, ThreadPool, and asynchronous delegates in C# .NET
In the previous lesson, Monitors, thread priority, exceptions and more in C# .NET, we mentioned other topics related to
threads. These included monitors, priorities, and exceptions. In today's C# .NET
tutorial, we're going to learn to use ThreadPool
to make our
applications more efficient. We'll also learn to work with asynchronous
delegates which will simplify our applications significantly.
Background Threads (Daemons)
A thread can run in the background. Although it may look that such a thread has a lower priority than a regular foreground thread, it's not like that. The background thread behaves like the thread in the foreground, except for what happens when we exit the application. If there are other threads running in the foreground besides the main thread, the process will not terminate until all the threads finish their job. If the main thread finishes and some background threads are running, these threads are automatically terminated no matter what job they have been doing.
So a background thread is like a worker thread doing some job for the main thread, and once the main thread terminates, it makes no sense for the worker thread to continue running. These threads are sometimes called daemons.
We create background threads simply by setting the
...End of the preview...

Premium article
ict.social is a large database made up of manuals and tutorials, whose main goal is to provide high-quality IT education to everyone. We started out in the Czech republic, where we display roughly a million articles per month and receive plenty of gratitude from our users. Thanks to our successful establishment, we are now bringing these articles to the rest of the world.
Although we are trying to keep our content free of charge, maintaining the site is a huge effort for everyone involved. Therefore, some content (exercises and more advanced material) costs network points. Don't worry, they're really cheap :)
Article description
Requested article covers this content:
In this tutorial, we'll learn how to run threads in the background and use ThreadPool by QueueUserWorkItem() and asynchronous delegates with a callback.
Buying this article gives you unlimited access to it forever. You will learn some more and help us keep giving our site maintenance which helps you and others get better futures. It's a win-win.
This article is licensed: Premium, by buying this article, you agree with the terms of use.
You gain points by supporting our network. This is done by sending a helpful amount of money to support the site, or by creating content for the network.
You can get points immediately using:
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Credit card | SMS | Wire transfer |