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Evolution of Asynchronous Programming in JavaScript
From Callbacks and Promises to Async/Await
JavaScript has changed significantly since its creation, especially in handling asynchronous operations. This article takes you on a journey through the evolution of asynchronous programming in JS, highlighting the fundamental intuition and coding standards that have been adopted over time.
The Origins
JavaScript was developed in just ten days by Brendan Eich in 1995 at Netscape. Its purpose? To bring interactivity to static web pages, complementing HTML by enabling dynamic user interfaces. As web applications became more complex, so did the need to handle time-consuming tasks, like API calls, without freezing the user interface.
Enter asynchronous programming: a way to perform operations in the background while keeping the app responsive. These operations generally include fetching data or complex, time-consuming calculations.
The Era of Callbacks
Initially, JavaScript handled async tasks with callbacks, which are functions passed as arguments that are executed later.
Let us first understand how the JavaScript code runs in the browser:
- JavaScript maintains a call stack to execute…