Let’s leave the server room and look at your neighbor. You know how you can leave a package at their door, and they pick it up three hours later? That’s asynchronous delivery. When you send a carrier pigeon with a note, the pigeon flies at its own pace, and the recipient reads it whenever—that’s the original asynchronous API. Even sending a letter is asynchronous; you write it, drop it in a box, and the mail delivery person (a real person with good legs) carries it across town while you nap.
Now, contrast that with the horror of a synchronous phone call from the 1990s. You had to be home, by the phone, waiting for the ring, and if you missed the call, you missed the news forever. Asynchronous voicemail freed us from that tyranny. Now we can pretend we didn’t see a text for three days. That’s not rude; that’s asynchronous etiquette.
Medium
