Benefits of asyncio

[Paul Rubin]

Marko Rauhamaa <marko at pacujo.net> writes:
>     - Thread programming assumes each thread is waiting for precisely
>       one external stimulus in any given state -- in practice, each
>       state must be prepared to handle quite a few possible stimuli.

Eh?  Threads typically have their own event loop dispatching various
kinds of stimuli.

>     - Thread-safe programming is easy to explain but devilishly
>       difficult to get right.

I keep hearing that but not encountering it.  Yes there are classic
hazards from sharing mutable state between threads.  However, it's
generally not too difficult to program in a style that avoids such
sharing.  Have threads communicate by message passing with immutable
data in the messages, and things tend to work pretty straightforwardly.

>    Asyncio makes the prototype somewhat cumbersome to write. However,
>    once it is done, adding features, stimuli and states is a routine
>    matter.

Having dealt with some node.js programs and the nest of callbacks they
morph into as the application gets more complicated, threads have their
advantages.