Stage 2 · Lesson 6 of 6
Blocking, cancellation and async streams
Three async habits separate juniors from people a team trusts. First, never block on async code with .Result or .Wait(). Under load, blocked threads pile up, the starves and response times jump from milliseconds to seconds.
Go async all the way up instead. Second, pass a CancellationToken through every call that takes time. ASP.NET Core gives each request a token that fires when the client disconnects, so EF Core and can stop work nobody is waiting for.
Third, IAsyncEnumerable<T> with await foreach streams items as they arrive instead of loading everything first; in .NET 10 it also feeds . Also remember that one must not run two queries at once.
Common trapaccepting a parameter and never passing it on to the slow calls.
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Resources for this stage
Start with· follow one of these
- CoursePaidGrokking Data Structures & Algorithms for Coding Interviews
Design Gurus · Beginner · Subscription
Arrays, hash tables, lists, stacks and queues: what every C# collection is built on, with complexity explained
- GuideFree.NET documentation
Microsoft
Free official guides on LINQ, generics, collections and the asynchronous programming model