Don't use lock-free programming unless you absolutely have to

Reason

It's error-prone and requires expert level knowledge of language features, machine architecture, and data structures.

Example, bad

extern atomic<Link*> head;        // the shared head of a linked list

Link* nh = new Link(data, nullptr);    // make a link ready for insertion
Link* h = head.load();                 // read the shared head of the list

do {
    if (h->data <= data) break;        // if so, insert elsewhere
    nh->next = h;                      // next element is the previous head
} while (!head.compare_exchange_weak(h, nh));    // write nh to head or to h

Spot the bug. It would be really hard to find through testing. Read up on the ABA problem.

Exception

Atomic variables can be used simply and safely, as long as you are using the sequentially consistent memory model (memory_order_seq_cst), which is the default.

Note

Higher-level concurrency mechanisms, such as threads and mutexes are implemented using lock-free programming.

Alternative: Use lock-free data structures implemented by others as part of some library.