Why exactly is void async bad?

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Well, walking through the reasons in the “avoid async void” article:

  • Async void methods have different error-handling semantics. Exceptions escaping from PrimeCustomTask will be very awkward to handle.
  • Async void methods have different composing semantics. This is an argument centered around code maintainability and reuse. Essentially, the logic in PrimeCustomTask is there and that’s it – it can’t be composed into a higher-level async method.
  • Async void methods are difficult to test. Following naturally from the first two points, it’s very difficult to write a unit test covering PrimeCustomTask (or anything that calls it).

It’s also important to note that async Task is the natural approach. Of the several languages that have adopted async/await, C#/VB are the only ones AFAIK that support async void at all. F# doesn’t, Python doesn’t, JavaScript and TypeScript don’t. async void is unnatural from a language design perspective.

The reason async void was added to C#/VB was to enable asynchronous event handlers. If you change your code to use async void event handlers:

protected override async void OnLoad(EventArgs e)
{
  if (CustomTask == null)
    await PrimeCustomTask();
}

private async Task PrimeCustomTask()

Then the async void disadvantages are restricted to your event handler. In particular, exceptions from PrimeCustomTask are propagated naturally to its (asynchronous) callers (OnLoad), PrimeCustomTask can be composed (called naturally from other asynchronous methods), and PrimeCustomTask is much easier to include in a unit test.

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