[RobertKerans]

Yes, yes, it is similar, and I maybe didn't get that across as well as I could have. JS is the default (for good reasons!), but IME if we're talking about game engines aimed at beginners that are suitable for getting programming concepts across, I feel a [synchronous] game loop is often easier to get across conceptually, to build on. And then yes, definitely framing it in the same way works really well because when they get stuck, you can point them at that and say "well you've already done something really similar here, here's the comparison, {unpack how the async stuff is working by framing it in the same way}, you should be able to now link these concepts together"

(Apologies to other commenters as well! I got a little bit salty when people mentioned async in relation to beginner programmers because it's not a simple thing. It's abstract and doesn't really make a bunch of sense until the beginner has built a floor of very basic programming to stand on)