A sharp teardown of Windows vs. Unix file deletion semantics lands on this: Windows leans on read-write locks; Unix rolls with a looser, non-blocking vibe—more like weakly-isolated DB transactions. It trades consistency for concurrency, dodging locks even if it means the rules get fuzzy.

The post zooms out, too. Filesystems like FxFS and ZFS are now shipping with transactional guts. Meanwhile, databases—Aurora DSQL, Spanner, TigerBeetle—are pushing default isolation toward Serializable or higher.