Distributed Async Await

This reading list explores the foundational literature that informs the design and development of Distributed Async Await.

---

Events vs. Threads

On the Duality of Operating System Structures

• Author(s): Hugh C. Lauer, Roger M. Needham
• Published: 1979
• Summary: This paper discusses the duality between procedure-based systems and event-based systems, illustrating how both paradigms can model equivalent structures.

Why Threads Are a Bad Idea (for Most Purposes)

• Author(s): John Ousterhout
• Published: 1995
• Summary: The author critiques thread-based implementations for their subpar efficiency compared to event-based implementations.

Why Events Are a Bad Idea (for High-Concurrency Servers)

• Author(s): Rob von Behren, Jeremy Condit, and Eric Brewer
• Published: 2003
• Summary: The authors critique event-based implementations for their subpar developer experience compared to thread-based implementations.

---

Sequential Programming Models & Event-Driven Execution Models

Cooperative Task Management without Manual Stack Management

• Author(s): Atul Adya, Jon Howell, Marvin Theimer, William J. Bolosky, John R. Douceur
• Published: 2002
• Summary: This paper is a foundational contribution to understanding how sequential programming model can be implemented on top of a event-driven execution model. Additionally, the paper introduces the notion of stack ripping as the primary reason for the subpar developer experience of event-based implementations.

A Language-Based Approach to Unifying Events and Threads

• Author(s): Peng Li, Steve Zdancewic
• Published: 2006
• Summary: This paper presents a language-level implementation of a sequential programming model implemented on top of a event-driven execution model.

Combining Events And Threads For Scalable Network Services. Implementation And Evaluation Of Monadic, Application-level Concurrency Primitives

• Author(s): Peng Li, Steve Zdancewic
• Published: 2007
• Summary: The authors evaluate monadic primitives for managing concurrency at the application level.

---

Concurrent Systems

Revisiting Coroutines

• Author(s): Ana Lucia de Moura, Roberto Ierusalimschy
• Published: 2009
• Summary: This paper classifies coroutines and provides a formal model using small-step operational semantics, offering insights into their use as an alternative to callbacks.

A Poor Man’s Concurrency Monad

• Author(s): Koen Claessen
• Published: 1999
• Summary: This paper presents an implementation of concurrency by defining atomic operations and continuations.

Semantics of Asynchronous JavaScript

• Author(s): Matthew C. Loring, Mark Marron, and Daan Leijen
• Published: 2017
• Summary: This paper presents a comprehensive formalization of the Node.js asynchronous execution model

A Model of Cooperative Threads

• Author(s): Martin Abadi, Gordon D. Plotkin
• Published: 1998
• Summary: This paper develops a model of concurrent imperative programming with threads, focusing on a small imperative language with cooperative threads that execute without interruption until they terminate or explicitly yield control.

---

Distributed Systems

A Note on Distributed Computing

• Author(s): Jim Waldo, Geoff Wyant, Ann Wollrath, and Sam Kendall
• Published: 1994
• Summary: The authors argue that a distributed system is intrinsicly different from a non-distributes system

Contributing

If you have suggestions for additional papers related to distributed async await, please open an issue or submit a pull request.