> it started because JS can't do parallel any other way I remember doing async in C++ with CORBA and ACE's Reactor pattern about 25 years ago, it was not beaut

> it started because JS can't do parallel any other way I remember doing async in C++ with CORBA and ACE's Reactor pattern about 25 years ago, it was not beautiful nor easy. But if memory serves, most interpreted server side languages used for web programming in the late 2000's didn't have mature multithreading or async capabilities and most of the deployments consisted on exec/forked full application servers. I would also bet that this is exactly what made Node.js popular. To each its own, async is just another tool in the proverbial belt.