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The Long Road To Asynchrony

The Long Road To Asynchrony

My keynote from PyCon Belarus 2020.

Andrew Godwin

February 22, 2020
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  1. LONG ROAD
    ANDREW GODWIN // @andrewgodwin
    ASYNCHRONY
    TO
    THE

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  2. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Hi, I’m
    Andrew Godwin
    • Django core developer
    • Worked on Migrations, Channels & Async
    • Once a Londoner, now from Denver, USA

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  3. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin

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  4. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    "Asynchronous Programming"
    What is it, really?

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  5. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Concurrent Programming
    The more general term

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  6. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Input
    Process
    Output
    Sequential execution

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  7. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Input
    Process
    Output
    Process
    Concurrent execution
    Archive

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  8. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Shared use of a single resource
    In this case, CPUs

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  9. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    "Communicating Sequential Processes", C. A. R Hoare

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  10. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    func main() {
    messages := make(chan string)
    go func() { messages <- "ping" }()
    msg := <-messages
    fmt.Println(msg)
    }

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  11. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Multiple processes
    multiprocessing
    Threads
    threading
    Event loops
    asyncio / twisted

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  12. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Multiple processes scale best
    It's also difficult and costs the most!

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  13. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Threads are unpredictable
    Also, the GIL is our ever-present friend

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  14. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Event loops are a good compromise
    They do require shared memory, though.

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  15. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Asynchronous ≈ Event loops
    Most of the time!

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  16. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    # Ready when a timer finishes
    await asyncio.sleep(1)
    # Ready when network packets return
    await client.get("http://example.com")
    # Ready when the coroutine exits
    await my_function("hello", 64.2)

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  17. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Network/timer updates
    An event loop's flow
    Select a ready task
    Run task
    Add new tasks to queue
    await

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  18. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Coroutines
    Time →

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  19. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    How did we get here?

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  20. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    1998 threading module, Stackless Python
    2002 Twisted
    2006 Greenlets (later gevent, eventlet)
    2008 multiprocessing module
    2012 Tulip, PEP 3156
    2014 asyncio module
    2005 Coroutine-friendly generators (PEP 342)

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  21. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    2017 Django Channels 1.0
    2018 Django Channels 2.0
    2019 DEP 9 (Async support)
    2020 Async views land in Django

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  22. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    No solution is perfect
    Everyone chooses different tradeoffs

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  23. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Asyncio is based on yield from
    Because it was prototyped in Python 2

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  24. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Can't tell if a function returns a coroutine!
    There are standard hints, but no actual guaranteed way

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  25. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    async def calculate(x):
    result = await coroutine(x)
    return result
    # These both return a coroutine
    def calculate(x):
    result = coroutine(x)
    return result

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  26. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Can't have one function service both
    How we got here makes sense, but it's still annoying sometimes.

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  27. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    # Calls get.__call__
    instance = MyModel.objects.get(id=3)
    # Calls get.__call__
    # and then awaits its result
    instance = await MyModel.objects.get(id=3)

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  28. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    You have to namespace async functions
    I really, really wish we didn't have to

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  29. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    instance = MyModel.objects.get(id=3)
    instance = await MyModel.objects.async.get(id=3)

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  30. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Completely different libraries!
    Even sleep() is different.

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  31. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    time.sleep ➞ asyncio.sleep
    requests ➞ httpx
    psycopg2 ➞ aiopg
    WSGI ➞ ASGI
    Django ➞ Django?

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  32. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Django & Async

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  33. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Asyncio only benefits IO-bound code
    Code that thrashes the CPU doesn't benefit at all

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  34. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    We're adding async to some parts
    The bits where it makes sense!

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  35. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    But, you can't mix sync and async
    So we have to have two parallel request paths

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  36. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    WSGIHandler
    __call__
    WSGI Server
    WSGIRequest
    BaseHandler
    get_response
    URLs Middleware
    View
    __call__
    HTTP protocol
    Socket handling
    Transfer encodings
    Headers-to-META
    Upload file wrapping
    GET/POST parsing
    Exception catching
    Atomic view wrapper
    Django 3.0 Request Flow

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  37. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    WSGIHandler
    __call__
    WSGI Server
    WSGIRequest
    BaseHandler
    get_response
    URLs Middleware
    Async View
    __call__
    ASGIHandler
    __call__
    ASGI Server
    ASGIRequest
    Sync View
    __call__
    Asynchronous
    request path
    Proposed async request flow

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  38. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    WSGIHandler
    __call__
    WSGI Server
    WSGIRequest URLs Middleware
    View
    __call__
    ASGIHandler
    __call__
    ASGI Server
    ASGIRequest
    Asynchronous
    request path
    BaseHandler
    get_response_async
    BaseHandler
    get_response
    URLs Middleware
    Async View
    __call__
    Implemented async request flow

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  39. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    We have to work with what we have
    I'd rather let people ship code than argue about perfection.

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  40. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Django's main job is safety
    It matters more than anything else

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  41. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Deadlocks
    Livelocks
    Starvation
    Race conditions

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  42. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Coroutines & the GIL actually help!
    You're saved from all the awful memory corruption bugs

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  43. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    async def transfer_money(p1, p2):
    await get_lock()
    # Code between awaits is atomic!
    subtract_money(p1)
    add_money(p2)
    await release_lock()

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  44. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    You can still screw up a lot
    Trust me, I have lived it while developing async

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  45. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    async def log_message(m):
    await client.post("log-server", m)
    result = calculate_result()
    log_message(m)

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  46. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    async def log_message(m):
    await client.post("log-server", m)
    result = calculate_result()
    await log_message(m)

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  47. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Async usability has a long way to go
    But it is undoubtedly the future!

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  48. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Python is the language of pragmatism
    If anyone can get it right, we can

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  49. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    What does the future hold?
    Hopefully, no GIL!

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  50. Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
    Let's make async understandable
    Almost every project could benefit, if we made it worth their time.

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  51. Thanks.
    Andrew Godwin
    @andrewgodwin // aeracode.org

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