Introduction to Asynchronous Programming

Imagine you're at a coffee shop. You order a latte, but instead of the barista preparing your drink while serving other customers, they stand idle, waiting for your latte to be ready. This would slow everything down, right?

In traditional programming, this is how tasks are often handled: one at a time, in sequence. If a task takes a while, like reading a file or making a network request, everything else waits. This is called blocking behavior.

JavaScript takes a different approach. It uses asynchronous programming to stay efficient. When faced with a time-consuming task, JavaScript hands it off to the environment (e.g., Node.js or the browser) and keeps working on other tasks. Once the original task is done, the result is picked ...