Blocking requests vs asynchronous requests: what's the difference?

async-http.org

Asynchronous HTTP with core.async

What happens if we have a function like http/get in a go-block?

(defn fetch-target []
  (let [url (server-url :target)]
    (:body (http/get url))))

If this is a method in clj-http, it seems to be blocking. Something that blocks, when in a go-block, is supposed to be bad, but what actually happens? Who says it’s bad, and why?

References

• clj-http
• http-kit client
• (newer) blog post on core.async and blocking calls
• (older)blog post on blocking IO