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Well, consider the difference between

  a().then(() =>
         b())
     .then(() =>
         c())
Compared to

  await a()
  await b() 
  await c() 
Even for this simple case I think it's much clearer. Then look at a more complex case:

  for( i=0; i<n; i++) {
    await a(i) ;
  } 
Now try re-writing this with then() and see the difference.




For the first one, it really feels like only a matter of how you break lines. Sure there is also the matter of anonymous function syntax, but

The latter is more fair, here is a possible solution:

  const gen = (function* () {
    for (let i = 0; i < n; i++) yield a(i);
  })();

  const run = next => !next.done && next.value.then(() => run(gen.next()));
  run(gen.next());
Or something similar using reduce. But in both cases, it illustrates the point, I guess.

But if we are at point we can introduce new keywords/syntax in the language, it would just as well possible to come with something like

  a.chain(b, c)
In case you need to pass parameters

  a.chain([b, p1, p2], c)
And for the latter case

  const indexes = (function* () {
    for (let i = 0; i < n; i++) yield i;
  })
  a.through(indexes)

Well, sure, if you have `yield`, you pretty much have `await` already, as `await` is thin syntactic sugar on top of `yield` in all languages other than OCaml.



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