Question

https://github.com/caolan/async

https://github.com/maxtaco/tamejs

These are two modules. To me, it seems like the same thing, right?

Or…are they used in different situations?

Answer 1

async is a library that provides methods to let you control the flow of your program. For example: “I want to process each item in the array asynchronously and have this function executed after all processing is completed”.

TameJS makes you write code that isn’t JS, but will get converted to JS. It’s aim is to make the way to do asynchronous programming more easy to follow.

I personally used TameJS, and there are a few problems with it:

• When an error is reported, the line number is the line number of the JS file, not the TJS file that you wrote. Tracking errors is a pain.
• There can be bugs that are hard to track down. I remember having a bug with return res.send(200) where the request was not being sent. It has been fixed by now, but it put a very bad taste in my mouth.

I am now using async and find it can make the code very easy to read and understand.

As a final suggestion, perhaps you should try writing your own code to manage the control flow. If you are new to JS, then that would be a very good learning experience to see what these libraries are doing on the inside. Even if you are in a time crunch, it would be best to understand what external libraries do, so you can make the best use of them.