Re: Blocking message passing for Workers

On Sat, Aug 9, 2014 at 9:12 AM, David Bruant <bruant.d@gmail.com> wrote:

> This topic is on people minds [1]. My understanding of where we're at is
> that "ECMAScript 7" will bring syntax (async/await keywords [2]) that looks
> like sync syntax, but acts asynchronously. This should eliminate the need
> for web devs for blocking message passing primitives for workers.


Syntax sugar around async is not a replacement for synchronous APIs.


> I personally hope it won't happen as it would be a step backwards.
> Blocking communication (cross-thread/process/computer) was a mistake. We
> need a culture shift. The browser and Node.js are a step in the right
> direction (they did not initiate it, but helped popularize it).
>

The problem wasn't that synchronous programming is bad, the problem was
that synchronous code in the UI thread blocks UI, and the solution to that
is asynchronous programming.  Saying "therefore all synchronous programming
is bad" is a very deep misunderstanding of the issue.

-- 
Glenn Maynard