Understanding Asynchronous Programming: Making Your Code Work Smarter, Not Harder
Imagine you visited a made-to-order restaurant that had a lot of customers waiting to be served, you made an order for a chocolate cake and while your cake is baking in the oven, the waiter does nothing but stands to wait for your cake to get ready. This may not be so much of a problem, but it will be if the person being attended to is the person you are standing next to… I can bet that you are most likely going to lose your cool. This is SYNCHRONOUS PROGRAMMING. It could be likened to waiting in line, each task must wait for the previous one to finish before it can start.
Let’s consider an alternate reality, where the waiter instead of waiting for the chocolate cake to bake completely, sets a buzzer that reminds him to come back to the order when the cake is ready, then goes on to take orders(other tasks) from other customers. This sounds better right? This is ASYNCHRONOUS PROGRAMMING. It is a non-blocking operation, that allows the idea of starting a task and doing something else, while waiting for the task to be completed. The buzzer in this context is referred to as a CALLBACK FUNCTION in programming.
In JavaScript, asynchronous programming is often done using Callbacks, Promises or the async/await syntax. Now let’s find out what all of these are.
A callback is a function passed into another function as an argument. This function gets called (or executed) when the asynchronous operation is complete.
Promises: A promise is a special object in JS that represents the eventual completion or failure of an operation.
Async /await is a cleaner and a more sophisticated way to work with Promises. It makes asynchronous code look like synchronous code, making it easier to read and write.
You can go through this docs for better understanding…
Common use cases for Asynchronous programming:
Fetching Data from a Server (API Calls): When your app needs to get data from a server (like loading new posts on social media), asynchronous programming allows the app to keep working while waiting for the server to respond.
File Reading and Writing (File I/O): If your program needs to read or write files, it can take some time. Instead of making the app wait and freeze during this process, asynchronous programming allows it to continue running while the file operations are happening in the background.
User Interaction: When a program waits for a user to do something (like clicking a button or typing), it doesn’t stop other tasks from running. Asynchronous programming allows the app to keep going while waiting for the user to interact.
I would write extensively about Promise, Callbacks and Async/wait soon, and if you do not wish to miss out on the juice here, subscribe to my newsletter too.
