[salibhai]

Futures sounds a lot like Promises to me. Or am I wrong?

[fugalh]

Yes, the two terms are unfortunately both synonymous (comparing different implementations of the pattern in different languages), and usually have specific meanings in the context of any given implementation. Often, as here, Promise is the write handle and Future is the read handle.

[matt_d]

Futures can be created with promises:

- http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/thread/future

- http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/thread/promise

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_and_promises

- http://docs.scala-lang.org/overviews/core/futures.html

[misframer]

Senders hold promises, and receivers hold futures. A promise represents a "promise" to deliver a value at some point to the holder of the future.