Crossing the Asynchronous Divide

The addition of improved support for asynchronous I/O in Python 3 is one of the most significant changes to the Python language since its inception. However, it also balkanizes the language and libraries into synchronous and asynchronous factions—neither of which particularly like to interact with the other. Needless to say, this presents an interesting challenge for developers writing a program involving I/O. In this article, I explore the problem of working in an environment of competing I/O models and whether or not they can be bridged in some way. As a warning, just about everything in this article is quite possibly a bad idea. Think of it as a thought experiment.