You can flatten the pyramids with logical AND-gates. Eg. it only continues if it's successful. Here's an example: var a = getData(); if (a == null) return

You can flatten the pyramids with logical AND-gates. Eg. it only continues if it's successful. Here's an example: var a = getData(); if (a == null) return null; var b = getMoreData(a); if (b == null) return null; var c = getMoreData(b); if (c == null) return null; var d = getEvenMoreData(a, c) if (d == null) return null; print(d); For async code I use counters. But async code is usually thick, not because lack of abstraction, but because you do not want any loose ends eg. you want to handle all and every exception that might arise. As well as having code for abortion and rate-limiting.