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by gfxmonk 4148 days ago
It seems like a lot of people are interested in fixing this, and would be keen to see a solution. I believe StratifiedJS is precisely that solution (for JS at least), and it has existed in working form for years: http://stratifiedjs.org/ (it's not just an experiment - it's remarkably stable).

StratidiedJS completely eliminates the sync/async distinction at the syntax level, with the compiler/runtime managing continuations automatically. A `map` function in SJS works just like you would want, regardless of whether the mapping function is synchronous or not.

In addition, it provides _structured_ forms of concurrency at the language level, as well as cancellation (which most async APIs don't support).

Disclosure: I work on StratifiedJS, and just wish more people knew about it.
1 comments
larard 4148 days ago
Looks like exactly what this article is talking about. I have no idea why noone else has commented on it....

How does stratifiedjs work under the hood? Does it switch out the stack?

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erjiang 4148 days ago
It compiles down to JavaScript that you can then run on Node or the browser.

I once wrote a big long rant about the mess that JS and Node have made trying to cope with async code and got tons of comments proposing X or Y library that would "fix" the issue. Not a single person mentioned StratifiedJS. I wonder if there was some history to it that prevented it from getting momentum.[0]

[0] http://notes.ericjiang.com/posts/791

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afri 4148 days ago
I think there are a couple of problems:

1 - SJS effectively 'solves' the concurrency problem, but it is not a problem that is on the top of most people's mind when they write an application. To a first approximation, the concurrency problem in JS looks "solved" to people already (promises, generators, etc), and it is only when you get down to it and look at it in detail you see that SJS is actually a substantially more complete solution to the problem.

2 - Many people see it as a 'cute' solution that doesn't scale to big applications. To counter that point we've developed a complete SJS client/server framework - https://conductance.io - and are writing big complicated apps on it (such as http://magic-angle.com/ ). It's still rough around the edges, but we're pretty confident that the upcoming release (scheduled for end March) will show just how powerful the SJS paradigm is. There is a presentation on it here: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/real-time-app-stratified-...

Disclaimer: I work on SJS!

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