[Solved] Order in Promise/Async/Await (Interview Question)

Question

First I would explain that nobody should ever rely on precise timing between two separate promise chains. They run independently of one another and as soon as you insert any real world asynchronous operations in either of those promise chains (which all real-world programming would contain), then the timing of each chain is entirely unpredictable vs. the other.

Instead the timing in real code depends upon the timing of the asynchronous operations, not on anything else. Imagine that each of the steps in this promise chain was reading a file or doing some random delay. Those are entirely unpredictable operations so which chain does what first depends upon the timing of the actual asynchronous operations, not on what is shown in this example.

So, trying to dissect the details of exactly when each item goes into the promise job queue and when it gets serviced is a complete waste of programming time and not useful in any real programming problem.

Further, if you really need a specific ordering of operations, then you don’t program with two independent promise chains. Instead, you use promise flow-of-control tools (like chaining everything into one chain or using Promise.all(), Promise.race(), etc…) to guide the execution/completion order into exactly what you want it to be regardless of the detailed inner workings of the promise implementation.

Then, I would explain the basics of how the promise queue works by walking through the first two links of one of the promise chains just to show that I understand how a promise gets resolved, gets added to the promise queue and then, when control is about to return to the event loop, the oldest item in the promise queue gets to run and call its .then() or .catch() handlers. This is just to illustrated that you understand the basics of how promises are scheduled and that they get serviced in LIFO order from their own job queue and before most other things in the event loop.

Then, I would explain that a few years ago, the spec was changed for some promise steps in the interest of improving performance and a JS engine before or after that spec change would likely generate different results for something like then. Yet another reason why you shouldn’t rely on that level of implementation detail.

If the interviewer insisted on me trying to explain the precise order in this problem and wouldn’t listen to my reasoning why that’s a pointless exercise, even after hearing my explanation for how I’d code a real world situation where execution order does matter, then unless this was just some really junior interviewer trying to be clever (and outsmarting themselves), I’d have to conclude this is not a good place to work. No senior developer should insist that this is a super valuable or practical exercise beyond showing that you have a basic understanding of how the promise job queue works.

Accepted Answer

First I would explain that nobody should ever rely on precise timing between two separate promise chains. They run independently of one another and as soon as you insert any real world asynchronous operations in either of those promise chains (which all real-world programming would contain), then the timing of each chain is entirely unpredictable vs. the other.

Instead the timing in real code depends upon the timing of the asynchronous operations, not on anything else. Imagine that each of the steps in this promise chain was reading a file or doing some random delay. Those are entirely unpredictable operations so which chain does what first depends upon the timing of the actual asynchronous operations, not on what is shown in this example.

So, trying to dissect the details of exactly when each item goes into the promise job queue and when it gets serviced is a complete waste of programming time and not useful in any real programming problem.

Further, if you really need a specific ordering of operations, then you don’t program with two independent promise chains. Instead, you use promise flow-of-control tools (like chaining everything into one chain or using Promise.all(), Promise.race(), etc…) to guide the execution/completion order into exactly what you want it to be regardless of the detailed inner workings of the promise implementation.

Then, I would explain the basics of how the promise queue works by walking through the first two links of one of the promise chains just to show that I understand how a promise gets resolved, gets added to the promise queue and then, when control is about to return to the event loop, the oldest item in the promise queue gets to run and call its .then() or .catch() handlers. This is just to illustrated that you understand the basics of how promises are scheduled and that they get serviced in LIFO order from their own job queue and before most other things in the event loop.

Then, I would explain that a few years ago, the spec was changed for some promise steps in the interest of improving performance and a JS engine before or after that spec change would likely generate different results for something like then. Yet another reason why you shouldn’t rely on that level of implementation detail.

If the interviewer insisted on me trying to explain the precise order in this problem and wouldn’t listen to my reasoning why that’s a pointless exercise, even after hearing my explanation for how I’d code a real world situation where execution order does matter, then unless this was just some really junior interviewer trying to be clever (and outsmarting themselves), I’d have to conclude this is not a good place to work. No senior developer should insist that this is a super valuable or practical exercise beyond showing that you have a basic understanding of how the promise job queue works.