async / await: Pausing a Function Without Pausing JavaScript

This is the fourth article in a series on how JavaScript actually runs. You can read the full series here or on my website . In the last article , we established a precise rule: Once a macrotask finishes, JavaScript drains all microtasks before selecting the next macrotask. Microtasks like Promises are continuations that must complete before the runtime moves on to the next macrotask. async / await is often described as syntactic sugar over Promises. If that's the case, we should already underst