I've been reading up on async/await somewhat but there are still things I don't get. I have experience writing socket servers with the Begin/End pattern, but I find some of this async/await confusing.

Asynchronous programming is a form of parallel programming that enables you to execute tasks separate from the main application thread and then notifies the thread when its execution is over.

You can take advantage of asynchrony to perform resource-intensive I/O operations sans the need to block the main or the executing thread of the application. Asynchrony when used properly can increase ...

Asynchronous services are easier to implement with support of the await and async keywords in WCF 4.5. We look at that, as well as contract-first development. There are performance benefits to using ...

Reactive Extensions will let you catch interim results from a long running process. Coupled with the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 support for asynchronous processing, you don't even have to lock up ...