Here's what I looked like while learning about how async/await works in .NET:

I was recently recommended this great video by Stephen Toub and Scott Hanselman, and immediately knew I would need to break blogs down into smaller parts.

What do I think they are?

It's said in the video, but async/await has been around for so long that we almost take it for granted. I know that I just kind of slap it on methods and hope for the best, vaguely knowing what it does.

From my understanding async/await should:

• Execute delegate functions in a threadpool
• Allow for non-blocking code
• Handle errors (??? somehow)

5 things that I learned while watching this video

• Action are delegates that are already defined that are parameterless and void returning.
• .NET has 2 kinds of Thread:
  • Foreground threads: These are threads that keep the application alive. If the last foreground thread exits, the application exits.
  • Background threads: These are threads that do not keep the application alive. If the last foreground thread exits, the application exits.
• How does data from one thread get passed back to the continuation?
  • There's a type called AsyncLocal<T> that can be "passed" between threads
  • .NET uses something called the Execution Context that can take care of this for you
• How does the program know how to wait?
  • Tasks have a load of logic behind them, more than you might think at first glance

Where I stopped in the video

Here's where I stopped https://youtu.be/R-z2Hv-7nxk?si=iS4aJSCt1n7Wctbt&t=2007

There's already a boatload of information here and there's been a lot of things that I didn't think about when initially coming up with how I thought that this would work.

So far:

• Stephen implemented his own threadpool
  • Has a static readonly BlockingCollection<Action, ExecutionContext?> that is used to queue up work
  • Has a method to queue up work
  • Implements a constructor that starts a number of background threads to process the work
    • These threads will use the ExecutionContext if it is provided
• Stephen also began implementing his own Task class
  • Has private fields for if the task is completed, if it has an exception, if it has a continuation and the ExecutionContext.
  • Has methods SetResult and SetException which calls Complete and handles the result accordingly
  • Has void ContinueWith(Action action) which tries to invoke the continuation
  • Has void Wait() which we will get to next time :)