Yes, it is to synchronous programming's great credit that it is simple, and to its great discredit that it is inefficient. Engineering tradeoffs, and all that.

Yes, it is to synchronous programming's great credit that it is simple, and to its great discredit that it is inefficient. Engineering tradeoffs, and all that. Quote[0]: > In Ingo's view, there are only two solutions to any operating system problem which are of interest: (1) the one which is easiest to program with, and (2) the one that performs the best. In the I/O space, he claims, the easiest approach is synchronous I/O calls and user-space processes. The fastest approach will be "a pure, minimal state machine" optimized for the specific task; his Tux web server is given as an example. Granted, most software is not developed for the Linux kernel, but neither is asynchronous programming black magic. I think the software space has rather been negatively impacted by being slow to adopt asynchronous programming, among other old practices. [0] https://lwn.net/Articles/219954/ https://lwn.net/Articles/219954/