AspNetCoreDiagnosticScenarios VS PSI

Important: following #prefer-asyncawait-over-directly-returning-task from https://github.com/davidfowl/AspNetCoreDiagnosticScenarios/b... is not correct.

The concerns raised are niche and edge case and task must always be forwarded as is provided there is no post-processing or resource cleanup with idisposable.

This one is a pretty decent guide - https://github.com/davidfowl/AspNetCoreDiagnosticScenarios/blob/master/AsyncGuidance.md

The C# (mostly applicat community has e.g. https://github.com/davidfowl/AspNetCoreDiagnosticScenarios/blob/master/AsyncGuidance.md written by one of the Asp.Net architects. I found this in this lovely thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36785691 which expresses my views/confusion more clearly than I can express.

No it doesn't, hence why there are best practices guidelines written by the .NET architects, and there was a research project to add Go/Java co-routines as well.

https://github.com/davidfowl/AspNetCoreDiagnosticScenarios/b...

https://twitter.com/davidfowl/status/1532880744732758018?lan...

https://github.com/dotnet/runtimelab/issues/2057

https://github.com/dotnet/runtimelab/issues/2398

They don't work just fine in C#, there is a reason why one of ASP.NET architects has written a guide of best practices.

https://github.com/davidfowl/AspNetCoreDiagnosticScenarios/b...

Many that praise async/await in C#, kind of forget it took about 10 years to spread across all the layer of the language and runtime, since it was done via IL rewriting, it caused several issues with F# async tasks, due to the age of the ecosystem plenty of code isn't async/await friendly and needs to be wrapped into Task.Run() or similar.

There is a best practices guideline from one of the ASP.NET architects, https://github.com/davidfowl/AspNetCoreDiagnosticScenarios/b...

During last year they researched adding Go/Java's approach to .NET, but now it is too late. See the ASP.NET Q&A session at BUILD 2023.

The best guidance I have found was from here: AsyncGuidance.md

To expand upon this thought, here is the AsyncGuidance doc[1] on why not to use .Result to get the return value of a completed Task in C#.

To make this simple they introduced async Main[2] a few years ago.

[1]: https://github.com/davidfowl/AspNetCoreDiagnosticScenarios/b...

Async Guidance

There are other techniques that aren't generally included in the "Zero Knowledge Proofs" set of techniques that are perhaps more practical for general development.

For example, I fine private set intersection[1] as implemented by OpenMined a really useful primative a bunch of privacy enhancing applications can be built on top of.

My colleagues and I recently published a pre-print[2] showing how to use this for sharing locations you and another person have had in common, without being able to see other locations. The paper talks about a social network built around this but I also think there are useful applications in things like real-world games (scavenger hunts etc)

[1] https://github.com/OpenMined/PSI/blob/master/private_set_int...

[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.01927

I came here to say Golomb compressed sets except now I see it's part of the question!

They are used by default in the OpenMined implementation of Private Set Intersection[1] - a multi-party computation technique.

[1] https://github.com/OpenMined/PSI/blob/master/private_set_int...

I was using OpenMinded/PSI exploring some PSI implementations, but I would like a way for the server to know the intersection size. Say Signal wants to calculate the average number of users from one person's address book (or whatever).