News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Callbacks as our Generation's Goto Statement by adamconroy on Thursday August 15, 2013 @11:48PM (#6222090)
I'm not saying the await syntax isn't useful or a better way to implement that problem. The title and opening of the article is comparing callbacks with gotos. It would be logical if he titled the article "C# Await syntax trumps callbacks when multiple callbacks need to be synchronised".

Any syntax can be used to create spaghetti code. Callbacks only become spaghetti like when nested / chained / abused. I've written hundreds of API methods using callbacks that I believe are very clean. I've recently written a large API which makes async service calls that follows this pattern :

void GetInvoiceHistory(int? customerId, Action<List<InvoiceItem>> callback, Action<string, Exception> exceptionCallback);

The consumer of this API does not need await, there is no need to nest callbacks, there is no need for try/catch and it is very clean to work with. So IMHO, stating that callbacks are this generation's gotos is a pile of shit.

There are no comments on this comment yet.