When Not to Use async/await in .NET: Avoid These Common Pitfalls

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Introduction

Asynchronous programming in .NET has become a fundamental skill for developers, especially with the introduction of async and await in C#. These tools help create responsive applications by offloading time-consuming operations without blocking the main thread. However, as powerful as async and await are, there are scenarios where their use can do more harm than good.

This article explores the situations where you shouldn’t use async/await in .NET, common pitfalls developers encounter, and how to avoid them with best practices.

Understanding How async/await Works

To understand when not to use async/await, it’s crucial to grasp how it works.

• What does async do?
  The async keyword marks a method as asynchronous, allowing the method to run without blocking the calling thread.
• What does await do?
  The await keyword tells the compiler to pause the execution of the asynchronous method until the awaited task completes, allowing other work to continue on the thread.

Under the hood, when you use async/await, the compiler generates a state machine that tracks the execution flow. While this enables non-blocking operations, it also adds some overhead…