Embrace JavaScript async/await/promises

[FunctionPoint]

Okay then,

-- Preface So JavaScript now has a very, very unforunate way of implementing asyncrounous execution, where the callee determines if a function should be run async, in stead of the caller.

To reduce boilerplate code for sequencing calls there is the 'await' keyword that enables sequential synchrounous calling of async functions, but with the restriction that the function containing 'await' must itself be async.

This causes JavaScript's 'async desease' where a whole tree of functions needs to become async, of there is one async library call in the bottom, say fetching a single row from a SQL table. That's why SmallJS has resisted spreading async promises upto now, by immediately following an 'async' JS function call with a 'then:' callback block, that may be sync.

-- Direction But more and more libraries are using async execution with promises, also for sync operations that only take a few milliseconds to execute. Writing the 'then' & 'catch' clauses to flatten them becomes too much boilerplate code, and forces splitting up of functions that just need to just execute sequentially. E.g.: A database read, update and delete transaction over multiple SQL tables.

-- Change (the real issue) So now SmallJS will migrate its libraties to async-await, with async functions returning JS promises. When using 'await' this will read very nicely, sequentially. The drawback is that calling an async function in JS always returns a JS promise, and there is no way of converting it to ST promise first. So if you don't 'await' the JS Promise, you will have to convert it to a ST Promise first, using: 'Promise fromJs: <call to an ST async method>'

I think the trade-off is worth it, with the greatest benefits for code processing files, databases and encryption. (And code that does not need 'async' is not affected)

-- Consequences This will be a very breaking change, because most '...then:' functions will be converted to 'async' functions. Also all calling code will have to ma changed too, using 'await' or 'Promise fromJs: ... then:'. Because of these major changes, the next version of SmallJS that implements this, will have version 2.0.