Why is crypto.subtle.digest designed to return a promise?

Every other system I’ve ever worked with has the signature hash(bytes) => bytes, yet whatever committee designed the Subtle Crypto API decided that the browser version should return a promise. Why? I’ve looked around but I’ve never found any discussion on the motivation behind that.

  • Ethan@programming.devOPEnglish
    3·
    4 months ago

    async/await infecting all of my code, being unable to create a get myField() method that involves a hash calculation. It may be standard to do heavy lifting concurrently, but async hash functions are certainly not standard in any of the languages I’ve used (which is quite a few).

      • macniel@feddit.de
        7·
        4 months ago

        Given the nature of JS running only on a single thread. Promises/asynchronity is the only way to keep the browser from locking up.

        Thus insisting on any other way is a major flaw in the developer not the language.