David's Tech Blog

I’ve been noticing comments about race conditions in async code, most specifically javascript used server side as in node.js. As someone who has written more lines of blocking code than I care to think about, I can relate to the angst of people trying to make the mind bending transition to thinking asynchronously. I think that just the name “race condition” is an artifact of the age of blocking code. There are no race conditions in the async world. The term is about bugs in blocking code. In async code there are no races, because it isn’t about getting done in order, its about getting done when you’re done. Thinking in terms of avoiding race conditions isn’t about bugs, its thinking in the wrong paradigm. There is no spoon.