Async Frontiers in JavaScript

About this presentation

Slowly but surely, promises have spread throughout the JavaScript ecosystem, standardized by ES 2015 and embraced by the web platform. But the world of asynchronous programming contains more patterns than the simple single-valued async function call that promises represent. What about things like streams, observables, async iterators—or even just cancelable promises? How do they fit, both in the conceptual landscape and in your day-to-day programming? For the last year, Domenic has been working to bring an implementation of I/O streams to the browser. Meanwhile, designs for a cancelable promise type (sometimes called "tasks") are starting to form, driven by the needs of web platform APIs. And TC39 has several proposals floating around for more general asynchronous iteration. We'll learn about these efforts and more, as Domenic guides us through the frontiers of popular libraries, language design, and web standards.