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Python has achieved pretty much the same callback hell avoidance, without the need for monads or a foray into functional programming (in an imperative language)

Python has achieved pretty much the same callback hell avoidance, without the need for monads or a foray into functional programming (in an imperative language). Python does it using generators as preemption points and using syntactic sugar for generator composition (yield from). The code looks rather nice, for async stuff: http://www.getoffmalawn.com/blog/playing-with-asyncio http://www.getoffmalawn.com/blog/playing-with-asyncio Using generators is rather clever. It's a look on generators not as fancy iterators that generate values but as fancy iterators that generate code execution steps.

bunderbunder 12y ago
Does it avoid the "Oops I accidentally forked a bunch of stuff I needed to run sequentially off into parallel threads that will now execute in an indeterminate order" situation? That's probably the biggest problem I see with C#'s async/await. Lovely syntax alone isn't sufficient, you need lovely syntax that doesn't make it it easier to write buggy code with the syntax than without. I suspect, though, (but cannot prove) that the risk of callback tangling an inevitable consequence of trying to slap this kind of abstraction on top of imperative programming style. The reason why I think success is more likely when functional languages try to do the same thing is the functional style itself: Explicitly passing your state around in arguments and return values rather than relying on side effects means that whenever you do need there to be a strict ordering among your callbacks, that will naturally express itself in the code.