It has improved a lot, yes. impl in return position in traits makes writing async traits much, much easier, as you can avoid a large number of Boxing and lifeti

It has improved a lot, yes. impl in return position in traits makes writing async traits much, much easier, as you can avoid a large number of Boxing and lifetime issues when you don't need a trait object (which is what the async_trait crate does under the hood). I also think you've really got to be willing to be pragmatic when writing async code. If you like to do functional chains, you've got to be willing to let go of that and go for simple imperative code with match statements. Where I find it gets complicated is dealing with streams and stuff, but for most application authoring use-cases, you can just await stuff that other people have written, or throw it into a `join_all` or whatever.