Zig's Asynchronous I/O: Asynchrony ≠ Concurrency
2025-07-19
This article delves into the often-confused concepts of asynchrony, concurrency, and parallelism in concurrent programming. The author argues that many language ecosystems suffer from a lack of understanding of 'asynchrony,' leading to duplicated library efforts and a worse user experience. Zig differentiates asynchrony from concurrency, enabling asynchronous I/O without mandatory concurrency. This prevents the 'viral' spread of asynchronous code, allowing synchronous and asynchronous code to coexist peacefully, improving code efficiency and maintainability.
Development
Concurrent Programming