Functional Programming in C#, Second Edition

16 Working with asynchronous computations

This chapter covers

• Using Task to represent asynchronous computations
• Composing asynchronous operations sequentially and in parallel
• Working with asynchronous sequences

In today’s world of distributed applications, many operations are performed asynchronously. A program can begin some operation that takes a relatively long time, such as requesting data from another application, but it doesn’t sit idle, waiting for that operation to complete. Instead, it goes on to do other work and resumes the operation once the data has been received.

Asynchrony certainly is the bread and butter of today’s programmer. I waited until this late in the book to deal with it because it adds a level of complexity that I ...