tl;dr: Setting the WorkItemPriority in ThreadPool.RunAsync actually changes the thread priority the code runs on, not just the position in the pending work queue.
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, but this entry has been a finding that had long eluded me and this was a good chance to blog again. If you’re still reading, thanks :)
In the Plain Old (or might I say, complete) .NET framework, there was a pretty useful property named Thread.Priority, which gave a lot of control to app developers. This allowed a very control of what would run, where, and how.
Using this API, you could have CPU bound (hence blocking) code that could run at a very low priority, without the need to be yielded somehow, like it’s suggested now with async and Task.Yield().
I was under the impression, since Windows Phone 8.0 and WinRT 8.0 have been introduced, that there was no available way to control the actual thread priority, since either the property does not exist, or even Thread does not exist anymore.
The suggested counterpart, Task, does not provide such a feature, leaving developers no choice but chunking the work, by using clever tricks or work item priority scheduling.
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