Meaning – The word asynchronous refers to a set of processes that do not depend on each other to operate. Here, factors like common timing signals have no effect on the final execution of each process. Since the processes in an asynchronous system have no regular time relationship, the outcomes can be unpredictable at times.
Even when it comes to the execution of program instructions, the absence of time based relationship leads to unexpected and mostly unpredictable outcomes.
In terms of programming, coders employ the use of asynchronous programming as it allows a unit of work to run separately from the primary application thread. When the specified work is complete, it notifies the main thread (as well as whether the work was completed or failed). Programmers have concluded that this style of programming often leads to enhanced productivity, as smaller blocks are executed parallely as there is no time or queue dependency.
Example of usage – “Very often, the programmer is fully aware that what they are doing is object oriented but only vaguely aware that they are writing asynchronous code.”
