JavaScript Async/Await for Beginners: No Callbacks Needed

Async code in JavaScript can feel tricky at first, especially if you’ve mostly worked with regular, synchronous code. But once you get a handle on async/await, it actually makes things way easier to read and reason about.

Before async/await, people used callbacks or chained `.then()` statements everywhere. That works, but it can get messy fast. Async/await lets you write asynchronous code that looks almost like normal top-to-bottom code, which makes debugging and understanding it much simpler.

The Basics: async Functions

An `async` function always returns a promise. Inside it, you can use the `await` keyword to pause execution until a promise resolves. Here’s an example using the `fetch` API:

async function fetchUser(userId) {
  const response = await fetch(`https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users/${userId}`);
  const user = await response.json();
  console.log(user.name);
}

fetchUser(1);

Notice how it reads almost like normal code: fetch the data, parse it, log the name. No messy `.then()` chains, no nesting callbacks.

Handling Errors Cleanly

Error handling is also straightforward. You can just wrap your async code in a `try/catch` block.

async function fetchUser(userId) {
  try {
    const response = await fetch(`https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users/${userId}`);
    if (!response.ok) throw new Error('Network error');
    const user = await response.json();
    console.log(user.name);
  } catch (error) {
    console.error('Something went wrong:', error);
  }
}

fetchUser(1);

If something goes wrong, the error is caught neatly without breaking your whole app. It keeps your code readable and your app stable.

Why Beginners Should Care

Learning async/await early will make building web apps easier. Fetching data from APIs, reading files, or talking to a database all involve async operations. If you understand async/await, you can handle these situations without getting lost in callback hell. The key is to just start experimenting and seeing how it works.

Next Steps

Try fetching multiple users, chaining API calls, or handling errors differently. Play with the code, break it, and fix it. That’s the best way to get comfortable with asynchronous JavaScript.

If you want a structured way to practice, check out the VeryCodedly beginner-friendly JavaScript course on /Learn. It guides you through the basics, including async/await, in a way that actually sticks.