Comment by lukaslalinsky
3 hours ago
There is no magic about the I/O interface. It's a regular dynamic dispatch, the same as if you use virtual functions in C++. Currently, and in the foreseeable future, there are only two options how it can run, blocking mode where each task occupies a dedicated thread, or using stackful coroutines. The interface implements blocking functions, there is no async waiting anywhere in there. But because it's dynamic dispatch, it allows the async implementation to do the "prepare operation, suspend until completed, wake up" dance, where the threaded implementation would just run the blocking syscall directly. There are plans to add stackless coroutines, but that will require many language restrictions to happen first, so it's not going to happen any time soon and when it does, the interface will likely change to accomodate it.
Doesn't that assume there are no intrinsic differences between single-threaded, multi-threaded and async execution? Plenty of code works fine single-threaded but breaks once it's run multi-threaded or async, and some works fine multi-threaded but breaks under async. With explicit async you have precise control over where you yield back to the event loop. With Zig's Io you don't get that unless you deliberately design for it, and at that point you've just got an implicitly coloured function.
> it allows the async implementation to do the "prepare operation, suspend until completed, wake up" dance, where the threaded implementation would just run the blocking syscall directly. There are plans to add stackless coroutines
Yeah so that's a lot of hidden magic and implicit logic. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hidden from those who don't read it.