Fire-and-Forget Async Calls: Starter A vs. Starter B – Which Approach is Best?

Understanding the Best Approach for Fire-and-Forget Asynchronous Calls

In the world of asynchronous programming, it's essential to understand the proper way to initiate and handle fire-and-forget calls. These calls are characterized by the absence of interest in the results and the desire to let the calling thread continue before the asynchronous method completes.

.NET Framework 4.6 and .NET Core 2: Starter A vs. Starter B

When embarking on fire-and-forget async calls, you'll encounter two common approaches: Starter A and Starter B.

• Starter A: Task.Run(() => DoWorkAsync());
• Starter B: Task.Run(async () => await DoWorkAsync());

The Importance of Understanding Fire-and-Forget

Before deciding between the two starters, it's crucial to fully grasp the implications of fire-and-forget. Specifically, when using fire-and-forget, you:

• Disregard the completion status of the async operation.
• Accept the possibility of unhandled exceptions in the async method.
• Acknowledge the potential for the async operation to never complete.

Fire-and-Forget vs. Background Processing

In most scenarios, what you truly seek is not fire-and-forget but rather a background processing service. This approach introduces a reliable queue and a separate background process to handle the asynchronous operations, ensuring reliability and error handling.

Starter A vs. Starter B

In the specific case of fire-and-forget with a single method call, eliding async and await (used in Starter A) is an acceptable solution. However, in general, it's advisable to retain async and await to maintain consistent behavior for asynchronous operations.

Conclusion

The proper way to initiate fire-and-forget asynchronous calls depends on your specific requirements. If you truly need fire-and-forget, Starter A may suffice for simple scenarios. However, for robust and reliable asynchronous processing, implementing a background processing service is strongly recommended. Moreover, retaining async and await in your codebase ensures consistency and adherence to asynchronous programming best practices.

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