Mutable state

How it is used

Used in programming, state management, and concurrency discussions. Teams often limit mutable state because shared updates can make code harder to predict and test.

Example sentences

1. The bug came from mutable state in the cache object, which one request updated while another request was still reading it.

   Here, mutable state refers to shared data that changes over time, creating inconsistent behavior when different operations access it together.

2. Our instructor asked us to remove mutable state from the example so the function would always return the same result.

   In this example, the term points to changeable stored values that affect whether a function behaves predictably.

Common collocations

• mutable state
• shared mutable state
• avoid mutable state
• state mutation

Related terms

• variableA name in a program that stores a value, such as a number, text or list, so that the code can use or change that value later.
• functionA named block of code that does one job. It can take input values, and it often returns a result to the code that called it.

More terms: Programming Concepts

• codebase
• library
• call
• loop
• class
• parameter
• IDE
• compile
• string
• boolean
• object
• method