Multiversion Concurrency Control
In 1978, David Patrick Reed published Naming and Synchronization in a Decentralized Computer System [Ree78][85] describing multiversion concurrency control (MVCC). This idea was expanded upon in Concurrency Control in Distributed Database Systems [BG81][86] by Phillip Bernstein and Nathan Goodman in 1981.
Their ideas form the basis of Clojure’s implementation of software transactional memory (STM), a critical element in Clojure’s concurrency toolbox.
That concludes our brief survey of the roots of Clojure and the inspiration for many of its headliners. It’s easy to see that Rich Hickey made intentional, well-reasoned choices when creating Clojure.
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