一个使用synchronized(this)的好例子。

// add listener
public final synchronized void addListener(IListener l) {listeners.add(l);}
// remove listener
public final synchronized void removeListener(IListener l) {listeners.remove(l);}
// routine that raise events
public void run() {
   // some code here...
   Set ls;
   synchronized(this) {
      ls = listeners.clone();
   }
   for (IListener l : ls) { l.processEvent(event); }
   // some code here...
}

正如你在这里看到的，我们在这个上使用同步来方便地与那里的一些同步方法进行长周期(可能是无限循环的run方法)合作。

当然，在私有字段上使用synchronized可以很容易地重写。但有时，当我们已经有了一些同步方法的设计时(例如，我们从遗留类派生出来的，synchronized(this)可能是唯一的解决方案)。

不，你不应该总是这样。但是，当一个特定对象上有多个关注点时，我倾向于避免它，而这些关注点只需要对它们本身是线程安全的。例如，你可能有一个可变数据对象，它有“label”和“parent”字段;它们需要是线程安全的，但是改变其中一个不需要阻止另一个被写入/读取。(在实践中，我将通过声明字段为volatile和/或使用java.util来避免这种情况。concurrent的AtomicFoo包装器)。

一般来说，同步有点笨拙，因为它只是一个大的锁定，而不是仔细考虑如何允许线程相互工作。使用synchronized(this)更加笨拙和反社会，因为它表示“当我持有锁时，没有人可以更改这个类的任何内容”。你需要多久做一次?

I would much rather have more granular locks; even if you do want to stop everything from changing (perhaps you're serialising the object), you can just acquire all of the locks to achieve the same thing, plus it's more explicit that way. When you use synchronized(this), it's not clear exactly why you're synchronizing, or what the side effects might be. If you use synchronized(labelMonitor), or even better labelLock.getWriteLock().lock(), it's clear what you are doing and what the effects of your critical section are limited to.

避免使用synchronized(this)作为锁定机制:这会锁定整个类实例，并可能导致死锁。在这种情况下，重构代码以只锁定特定的方法或变量，这样整个类就不会被锁定。同步可以在方法级别内使用。 下面的代码展示了如何锁定一个方法，而不是使用synchronized(this)。

   public void foo() {
if(operation = null) {
    synchronized(foo) { 
if (operation == null) {
 // enter your code that this method has to handle...
          }
        }
      }
    }

我对2019年的看法，尽管这个问题本可以已经解决了。

如果你知道你在做什么，锁定'this'并不坏，但在幕后锁定'this'是(不幸的是synchronized关键字在方法定义中允许)。

如果你真的希望你的类的用户能够“窃取”你的锁(即阻止其他线程处理它)，你实际上希望所有同步方法在另一个同步方法运行时等待，以此类推。 它应该是有意的、经过深思熟虑的(因此有文档来帮助用户理解它)。

更详细地说，反过来，你必须知道如果你锁定了一个不可访问的锁(没有人可以“偷”你的锁，你完全控制等等)，你会“获得”(或“失去”)什么。

对我来说，问题是方法定义签名中的synchronized关键字使程序员很容易不考虑锁定什么，如果你不想在多线程程序中遇到问题，这是一个非常重要的事情。

人们不能争辩说，“通常”你不希望你的类的用户能够做这些事情，或者“通常”你想要……这取决于你编写的是什么功能。因为你不能预测所有的用例，所以你不能制定一个经验法则。

例如，prinwriter使用了一个内部锁，但是如果人们不想让他们的输出相互交错，他们就很难从多个线程中使用它。

锁是否可以在类外部访问是程序员根据类的功能来决定的。它是api的一部分。例如，你不能从synchronized(this)移到synchronized(provateObjet)而不冒破坏使用它的代码更改的风险。

注1:我知道你可以实现任何同步(这个)'实现'通过使用显式锁对象和暴露它，但我认为这是不必要的，如果你的行为是很好的记录，你实际上知道什么锁定'this'的意思。

注2:我不同意这样的观点:如果一些代码不小心偷了你的锁，那就是一个bug，你必须解决它。这在某种程度上等同于说我可以让我所有的方法公开，即使它们本不应该是公开的。如果有人“意外”调用我的意图是私人方法，这是一个bug。为什么会发生这样的事故!!如果能偷你的锁对你的类来说是一个问题，那就不要允许它。就这么简单。

I think there is a good explanation on why each of these are vital techniques under your belt in a book called Java Concurrency In Practice by Brian Goetz. He makes one point very clear - you must use the same lock "EVERYWHERE" to protect the state of your object. Synchronised method and synchronising on an object often go hand in hand. E.g. Vector synchronises all its methods. If you have a handle to a vector object and are going to do "put if absent" then merely Vector synchronising its own individual methods isn't going to protect you from corruption of state. You need to synchronise using synchronised (vectorHandle). This will result in the SAME lock being acquired by every thread which has a handle to the vector and will protect overall state of the vector. This is called client side locking. We do know as a matter of fact vector does synchronised (this) / synchronises all its methods and hence synchronising on the object vectorHandle will result in proper synchronisation of vector objects state. Its foolish to believe that you are thread safe just because you are using a thread safe collection. This is precisely the reason ConcurrentHashMap explicitly introduced putIfAbsent method - to make such operations atomic.

总之

Synchronising at method level allows client side locking. If you have a private lock object - it makes client side locking impossible. This is fine if you know that your class doesn't have "put if absent" type of functionality. If you are designing a library - then synchronising on this or synchronising the method is often wiser. Because you are rarely in a position to decide how your class is going to be used. Had Vector used a private lock object - it would have been impossible to get "put if absent" right. The client code will never gain a handle to the private lock thus breaking the fundamental rule of using the EXACT SAME LOCK to protect its state. Synchronising on this or synchronised methods do have a problem as others have pointed out - someone could get a lock and never release it. All other threads would keep waiting for the lock to be released. So know what you are doing and adopt the one that's correct. Someone argued that having a private lock object gives you better granularity - e.g. if two operations are unrelated - they could be guarded by different locks resulting in better throughput. But this i think is design smell and not code smell - if two operations are completely unrelated why are they part of the SAME class? Why should a class club unrelated functionalities at all? May be a utility class? Hmmmm - some util providing string manipulation and calendar date formatting through the same instance?? ... doesn't make any sense to me at least!!

这实际上只是对其他答案的补充，但如果你对使用私有对象进行锁定的主要反对意见是，它会使你的类与与业务逻辑无关的字段混乱，那么Project Lombok有@Synchronized在编译时生成样板:

@Synchronized
public int foo() {
    return 0;
}

编译,

private final Object $lock = new Object[0];

public int foo() {
    synchronized($lock) {
        return 0;
    }
}