async-await

Vocabulary Word

Definition

'Async-await' is a neat trick in programming to help manage tasks that take unpredictable time to finish, like downloading a file. It allows the program to 'wait' on one line of code without stopping everything else it needs to do.

Examples in Different Contexts

In software development, 'async-await' is a syntactic feature of programming languages like JavaScript that allows developers to write asynchronous code that looks and behaves like synchronous code. A software developer might say, 'Using async-await simplifies handling asynchronous operations, such as fetching data from a server, by allowing us to write cleaner and more readable code.'

Practice Scenarios

Tech

Scenario:

The load time for the landing page is far too high. Could this be a bottleneck in our back-end processing?

Response:

The issue could be resolved by the application of async-await, which would stop the server-side computations from blocking other tasks.

Academics

Scenario:

While teaching you about AJAX requests, I've noticed that the students struggle when the responses arrive out of order.

Response:

Teaching them about async-await will help them understand how to successfully manage AJAX requests and their responses.