The Incredible Growth of Python (stackoverflow.blog)

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Sep 11, 2017 at 5:21 PM, Gregory Ewing
<greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Chris Angelico wrote:
>>
>> Async functions in
>> JS are an alternative to callback hell; most people consider async
>> functions in Python to be an alternative to synchronous functions.
>
>
> What do you base that on? Seems to me async is an alternative
> to callback-based frameworks such as Twisted.
>
> Calling async functions an alternative to sync functions
> doesn't make sense, because if sync functions will do what
> you want, there's no need to use async ones.

Do a quick poll here on the list. Who sees async functions as an
alternative to Twisted? Who here has even *used* Twisted? (How many
even know what it is?)

Personally, I think of them as an alternative to threading. Basically
they're a way to use the code style of threaded I/O (functions that
block when they need to read from a socket etc) with the light-weight
efficiency of doing everything in one thread. I have never used
Twisted.

ChrisA