Busy Waiting

In computer science, busy-waiting (also busy-looping or spinning) originated in the 1960s when multiprogramming systems used polling to check device status before sophisticated interrupt handling existed. Dekker's algorithm (1965) used busy waiting to achieve mutual exclusion without hardware support. The technique gained formal recognition in academic literature in the early 1970s. The alternative phrase "hurry up and wait" has separate origins, emerging from U.S. military usage in the 1940s to describe the pattern of rushed preparation followed by idle waiting.