On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 3:16 PM, Gregory Ewing <greg.ew...@canterbury.ac.nz> wrote: > Chris Angelico wrote: >> >> "await" means "don't continue this function until that's done". It >> blocks the function until a non-blocking operation is done. > > > However, *not* using 'await' doesn't mean the operation > will be done without blocking. Rather, it won't be done > at all (and is usually an error, but there's no way for > the implementation to detect it at the time). > > I don't blame Steve for being confused. All the > terminology around async/await is inherently confusing > and counterintuitive, IMO. I'm disappointed that we've > ended up here.
Asynchronous I/O is something to get your head around. As someone who teaches both JavaScript and Python, I've run into this quite a bit, and frankly, callbacks may be easy to explain at a concrete level, but I'd much rather work with generator-based async functions (which JS is getting soon too). The best way to think about it IMO is a "process" that does blocking calls, and which the "system" can multitask away from any time it's blocked. Your function awaits something, but Python doesn't. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
