What should I learn first about async Node.js?
Sync vs async. Understand the difference between blocking and non-blocking code, why Node.js is non-blocking, and what happens when the main thread is blocked. This is the foundation everything else builds on.
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More FAQs in A Roadmap to Mastering Async I/O in Node.js
In order: sync vs async, callbacks, promises and async/await, the event loop, libuv, streams, and best practices. Each step builds on the last into real understanding of Node.js's core concurrency model.
After you understand async/await. The event loop explains why async callbacks run in a specific order, which you can only appreciate after writing async code and wondering about the order of execution.
Because libuv is what provides Node.js's async I/O. Understanding it explains how operations are delegated off the main thread, how the thread pool works, and why the event loop behaves the way it does.
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