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Async/await is specialised syntax for a more generic concept of monads which haskell was the language in which this was heavily researched. Specifically contin

Async/await is specialised syntax for a more generic concept of monads which haskell was the language in which this was heavily researched. Specifically continuation monad describes asynchronous computation (promises) and was one of the motivating examples In the early 90s going back all the way to Moggis original "notions of computations" paper from 1991 http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/topics/monads.html http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/topics/monads.html Async/await and LINQ were the brainchild of Erik Meijer. A haskell researcher. Also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25565229 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25565229 from a recent discussion here. Specifically http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.72.868&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.72.... where Eric tells his story about bringing haskell concepts to .NET

daxfohl 6y ago
Fwiw, c# wasn't even the first dotnet language with it. F# had async computation expressions a few years earlier.
- sideeffffect 6y ago
  But F# doesn't have async/await. As you write, it has "computation expressions", which are inspired by Haskell's "do-notation", but are more generalised and powerful (than both Haskell's "do-notation" or Scala's "for-comprehension", let alone async/await). One of the things I liked best about F#.
  - daxfohl 6y ago
    Idk if you can strictly say that. Haskell allows more generalized do blocks because of HKTs. I blogged about this a few years ago. https://www.sparxeng.com/blog/software/higher-kinded-fun-in-haskell https://www.sparxeng.com/blog/software/higher-kinded-fun-in-.... (Granted, I've never had a use for that beyond code golf). And C# is nice because you can await anywhere in an expression instead of just at a "let!" declaration. This is something I do miss when using F#. But agreed, F# is usually my language of choice.
    - daxfohl 6y ago
      I think the Haskell abstraction is what allows monad transformers. Saw some hacks in F# to allow similar, but you lose generic "lift", for instance.

daxfohl 6y ago

Fwiw, c# wasn't even the first dotnet language with it. F# had async computation expressions a few years earlier.

sideeffffect 6y ago
But F# doesn't have async/await. As you write, it has "computation expressions", which are inspired by Haskell's "do-notation", but are more generalised and powerful (than both Haskell's "do-notation" or Scala's "for-comprehension", let alone async/await). One of the things I liked best about F#.
- daxfohl 6y ago
  Idk if you can strictly say that. Haskell allows more generalized do blocks because of HKTs. I blogged about this a few years ago. https://www.sparxeng.com/blog/software/higher-kinded-fun-in-haskell https://www.sparxeng.com/blog/software/higher-kinded-fun-in-.... (Granted, I've never had a use for that beyond code golf). And C# is nice because you can await anywhere in an expression instead of just at a "let!" declaration. This is something I do miss when using F#. But agreed, F# is usually my language of choice.
  - daxfohl 6y ago
    I think the Haskell abstraction is what allows monad transformers. Saw some hacks in F# to allow similar, but you lose generic "lift", for instance.