4 ms·

async/await colored functions is a disaster: https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-is-your-function/ https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/

async/await colored functions is a disaster: https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-is-your-function/ https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-is-... And so many languages and ecosystems have fallen to this. Even C#, which is surprising since I expected them to know better. There was so much hype about async/await (nodejs was a big factor for this hype), that many languages adopted this without fully considering the long term maintenance nightmare it will create. Because of this, I'm mostly interested in only Go and Java. Go obviously avoids the async/await trap with its core feature, goroutines. Java managed to resist this trap and has Project Loom coming which will give it the same feature as goroutines, but in a backwards compatible way. Go is criticized for not having generics, but I appreciate the slower and more thoughtful way both languages add new features. Javascript, C#, etc. these languages seem to add whatever FOMO driven new hyped language feature is popular at the moment. Many complain about Go taking so long to add generics, just like many complained about lambdas in Java. But evolving a language should not be done quickly and recklessly. My focus is still on Java, but I'm occasionally looking at Go to see what they're doing. It's interesting watching these two languages become more like each other (generics in Go and fibers in Java).

jayd16 6y ago
Async/await solves a different problem than green threads. Async/await works well when you need to manage scheduling of a single thread (very common in UI or other cross runtime tasks). Implicit green threads are nice if all you care about is total throughput across all threads. Its not great for keeping a single thread responsive.
- eweise 6y ago
  Async / await is just an abstraction over threads. It doesn't dictate how many threads are used.
  - jayd16 6y ago
    I'm not sure what your point is exactly but I would disagree with the presented assertions none the less. In C# async/await is essentially sugar around callbacks, which isn't really related to threads, per se. However, the language has the Task Parallel Library, and a Task promise type that has a lot of methods around scheduling and thread targeting. Essentially the TPL does dictate how many threads are used and is, as far as language design is concerned, inextricable from async/await.
    - eweise 6y ago
      My reply was in response to "Async/await works well when you need to manage scheduling of a single thread" My point being that it isn't limited to cases where you only have a single thread.
      - jayd16 6y ago
        Ah, agreed. That's a case where it does well, not the only case.
fomine3 6y ago
There's still some problem for async/await but I won't say it "disaster". I don't think Java is good by not improving async systems. I like Go's thoughtful adoption but personally I wonder they can do faster.

jayd16 6y ago

Async/await solves a different problem than green threads. Async/await works well when you need to manage scheduling of a single thread (very common in UI or other cross runtime tasks). Implicit green threads are nice if all you care about is total throughput across all threads. Its not great for keeping a single thread responsive.

eweise 6y ago
Async / await is just an abstraction over threads. It doesn't dictate how many threads are used.
- jayd16 6y ago
  I'm not sure what your point is exactly but I would disagree with the presented assertions none the less. In C# async/await is essentially sugar around callbacks, which isn't really related to threads, per se. However, the language has the Task Parallel Library, and a Task promise type that has a lot of methods around scheduling and thread targeting. Essentially the TPL does dictate how many threads are used and is, as far as language design is concerned, inextricable from async/await.
  - eweise 6y ago
    My reply was in response to "Async/await works well when you need to manage scheduling of a single thread" My point being that it isn't limited to cases where you only have a single thread.
    - jayd16 6y ago
      Ah, agreed. That's a case where it does well, not the only case.

fomine3 6y ago

There's still some problem for async/await but I won't say it "disaster". I don't think Java is good by not improving async systems. I like Go's thoughtful adoption but personally I wonder they can do faster.