On: Fixing the callback spaghetti in node.js

[gfxmonk]

got a link? I'd be interested to know how it deals with errors / exceptions, for example.

[weixiyen → gfxmonk]

https://gist.github.com/1250084

[snprbob86 → weixiyen]

I've been using: https://github.com/caolan/async

It looks pretty decent in CoffeeScript:

  blah = (done) ->
    async.series [
      (next) -> foo next
      (next) => @bar.baz 1, 2, 3, next
      (next) ->
        x = y
        z w next
    ], done

[gfxmonk → weixiyen]

Looks concise, but doesn't much help with the fundamental problems of callback code - exceptions don't work right, and "callbacks all the way down" whenever something starts having any async computation.

[weixiyen → gfxmonk]

what do you mean by this -> "callbacks all the way down" whenever something starts having any async computation.

[gfxmonk → weixiyen]

Imagine function a calls b() and function b calls c(), and they're all sync.

Now, let's say c() changes and needs to call someAsyncFunction() and provide a callback. Which means c itself needs to take a callback. Which means b needs to provide a callback, so b needs to also take a callback, so a needs to provide a callback. And so forth.

Callbacks are infectious - once anybody in the call stack needs one, everybody needs one even if they just pass it on down the stack. Unless you don't need to do anything with return values, but that's fairly rare.