Grand Central Dispatch
Shares rank 10 of 11 concurrency libraries by recommenders
Apple's free library for concurrent code, praised for readability and parallel work. Caveat: poorly written code can crash apps.
Apple's free library for concurrent code, praised for readability and parallel work. Caveat: poorly written code can crash apps.
7 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 71%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Does not combine with some concurrency frameworks
“Not if you want to use anything of concurrency, because they're not made to work together.”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Approachable Swift Concurrency” Poorly written code crashes apps
“poorly coded Apple's Grand Central Dispatch library crashes the application”
Comment from 26 Jul 2026 in “GDID Windows – Cut the tracker that follows you even under VPN” Adds complications
“do nothing but add complications”
Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “Swift is a more convenient Rust”
Other concurrency libraries people recommend
The four most recommended other concurrency libraries, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tokio | 57 | 45 | 56% | 12 | — | — |
| Akka | 12 | 9 | 57% | 7 | — | — |
| ZIO | 11 | 2 | 85% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Trio Python library | 10 | 0 | 100% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Grand Central DispatchThis page | 5 | 2 | 71% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
All 7 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“poorly coded Apple's Grand Central Dispatch library crashes the application”
“Reverting to GCD, fixed both these issues.”
“using APIs io_uring and grand central dispatch is basically the whole point of all this async stuff”
“great middle ground for parallelisation”
“do nothing but add complications”
“I find Combine / GCD code far easier to write and read and understand”
“Not if you want to use anything of concurrency, because they're not made to work together.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.