Non-Blocking

Definitions

1. Describes an operation or API call that returns immediately rather than waiting for completion, allowing the calling thread to continue executing other work. The result is typically retrieved later via a callback, promise, or polling mechanism.

   In plain English: An operation that doesn't make you wait — it starts the work and lets you do other things until the result is ready.

   Example: "We switched the database driver to non-blocking mode so the event loop can serve other requests while waiting for query results."

Related Terms

• Parallelism
• Task Parallelism
• Thread
• Web Worker
• Context Switch
• Lock-Free Data Structure
• Thread Pool
• Work Stealing