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I see "async" and "sync" get misused or misunderstood a lot.
What's "asynchronous" or "synchronous" is always relative to a context. "asynchronous" really just means "executed later", but later relative to what? Consider the following... (thread)
What's "asynchronous" or "synchronous" is always relative to a context. "asynchronous" really just means "executed later", but later relative to what? Consider the following... (thread)
Here we have a simple queue mechanism.
If you call `schedule(fn)` it will enqueue the function `fn`, and start flushing the queue, executing queued functions one-by-one until it's empty.
This is a common method for breadth-first traversal (another topic)
Now let's use it...
If you call `schedule(fn)` it will enqueue the function `fn`, and start flushing the queue, executing queued functions one-by-one until it's empty.
This is a common method for breadth-first traversal (another topic)
Now let's use it...
The very first time we call `schedule`, it will synchronously execute the function WRT the surrounding code block.
HOWEVER, if you call `schedule` again *inside* of itself, you'll notice that the function passed will execute ASYNC relative to it's surrounding code block...
HOWEVER, if you call `schedule` again *inside* of itself, you'll notice that the function passed will execute ASYNC relative to it's surrounding code block...
But the point is, what is synchronous or asynchronous is really relative to some temporal bounds. Those bounds are generally considered to be a currently executing block of code, but there's nuance even there.
