This promises to make asynchronous programming far easier. (At least for relatively simple tasks)

Let’s try it out and see.

We’ll need some relatively intensive/slow function to test it with. I’m going to try calculate PI (badly)

Start with a new console project

Add a new class called PiCalculator

We will then add a normal function (not asynchronous) for calculating pi.

This is one I cobbled together from other parts of the internet.

It takes one parameter that determines how many iterative steps it goes through. The more steps the more accurate the result will be.

We can call this method and output easily enough.

This will give us the following output

Beginning

3.1415928535897532384686437064

End.

It took about 5 seconds to run.

Now to introduce the async keywords.

First well need to make and async friendly version of our calculate method.

Our async friendly version needs to return a task object.

Putting it all together gives us this.

Since the Calculation is running asynchronously. The output from calling the Go method is now

Begining

End

3.1415928535897532384686437064

The main thread continues on while our new asynchronous method works away in the background.

There’s a lot more to asynchronous methods than this.

There is more information to be found at.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/hh191443.aspx

and

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/jj991977.aspx