do Python folks do much with asynchronous programming (ex. async / await)? it seems to be a fact of life over in the Javascript world, but i don’t think i’ve ever seen anyone do that in the Python code examples i’ve seen in the forum here, although the concept seems to have been discussed briefly at one point.
i ask because JupyterLite, using the Pyodide kernel, currently seems to handle network requests a little differently than a typical Python setup. because code on Pyodide is intended to be run from the browser, and the browser is sandboxed from your machine (and the host server typically won’t handle your requests either), those requests will typically need to go through a Javascript backend.
the consequence of that is that instead of using the requests and urllib modules that it seems like most Python folks use to make requests, Pyodide has its own set of modules for making requests. several of these run asynchronously, and one of those is the one i’ve chosen to use in my example. do you think Python folks would find it hard to figure out what’s going on with the async stuff if they’ve never seen it before?
there currently is a shim available for requests and urllib that involves a couple of lines of code, and it looks like Pyodide has incorporated those into its core a couple of weeks ago (so folks wouldn’t have to shim themselves), although JuypterLite hasn’t yet put that into their version of Pyodide. i’m thinking soon, requests and urllib should be more or less available (maybe except for some of the more advanced features) in JupyterLite though, without user shimming. (right now pyinaturalist relies on requests, too. so i’m, hoping that it’ll work once the JupyterLite Pyodide kernel gets the updates.)
but even then, i like the idea of making requests asynchronously, and so i was going to do a lot of the requests in my own code that way. but if it’s going to be too out of left field for most Python folks, i might stick with plain ol’ requests (once it’s available)…