Asynchronous Programming Tutorial

Asynchronous programming is a programming paradigm where the execution of the program is not blocked by the operations that take a long time to complete. This is particularly useful in I/O operations, such as reading from a file or making a network request, where the program can continue executing other tasks while waiting for the I/O operation to complete.

Key Concepts

Non-blocking I/O: The program does not wait for the I/O operation to complete. Instead, it can continue executing other tasks.
Callbacks: A callback is a function that is passed as an argument to another function and is executed after the latter function has completed its execution.
Promises: A promise is an object representing the eventual completion or failure of an asynchronous operation and its resulting value.
Generators: A generator is a special type of function that can be paused and resumed, allowing for the execution of asynchronous code in a more linear fashion.

Example

Here's a simple example of asynchronous programming using callbacks in JavaScript:

function fetchData(callback) {
  setTimeout(() => {
    callback('Data fetched successfully');
  }, 2000);
}

function processData(data) {
  console.log(data);
}

fetchData(processData);

In this example, fetchData is a non-blocking function that simulates fetching data from a server. It takes a callback function as an argument and executes it after a delay of 2 seconds.

Resources

For more information on asynchronous programming, you can check out the following resources: