Discussion on: What's your favorite addition to ES2015+

[Alex Lohr]

Async/await is so great. No more callback hell ever again.

[Jonathan Kuhl]

First time I used Async/Await was a Vue project with a Java Servlet backend. Plopped await in front of the fetch that connected with my back end, and async in front of vue's mounted() method and squealed in delight when my component rendered with my data base information for the first time.

Multiple moments of triumph at once, first use Async/Await, first success with a servlet, and was still new to Vue.JS.

[Laurie]

Ah callback hell. Such fun.

[Anas T]

Example?

[Alex Lohr]

Let's say, you need to sequentially resolve three promises. Callback hell looks like this:

function asyncJob(callback) {
  asyncA(xyz, (err, buffer) => {
    if (err) { throw err; }
    asyncB(buffer, (err, result) => {
      if (err) { throw err; }
      asyncC(result, (err, response) => {
        if (err) { throw err; }
        if (response.ok()) { return callback(); }
        throw new Error('Could not send result');
      });
    })
  });
}

Now the same with Promises:

const asyncJob = () => asyncA(xyz)
.then((buffer) => asyncB(buffer))
.then((result) => asyncC(result))
.then((response) => {
  if (response.ok()) { return Promise.resolve(); }
  throw new Error('Could not send result');
});

Reads a lot better, doesn't it? Still, it's pretty terse and has a lot of repetition, so async/await is a big improvement when it comes to reading flow:

const asyncJob = async () => {
  const buffer = await asyncA(xyz);
  const result = await asyncB(buffer);
  const response = await asyncC(result);
  if (!response.ok()) {
    throw new Error('Could not send result');
  }
};

[Laurie]

We call the second thenable hell.
I'm a fan of Promise.all as a solution, but I acknowledge async/await is a great option too.

[Alex Lohr]

.then(...) still takes a callback. So while it reads much more congruently, it's basically still good old callback hell, just in a better suit and with better manners. Async/await is a game changer when it comes to readability of asynchronous code.