While a great attempt at an analogy, I don't think that it really helps things. I've never misunderstood THAT part of event-based asynchronicity (is that even a word?) The part that is confusing to me is HOW it works and eventually to the point of WHY and/or HOW it is supposedly better than traditional threading (other than cleaner-looking code). I've never seen a good explanation in non-OS programmer terms.
To me, it seems that no matter how you take the "messages" to do work, that work still has to be done. It surely doesn't magically use less resources because you told the OS that it could just call you back when it is done, as opposed to you having to hang around? Something has to be hanging around on one side or the other, and the "call back" takes resources as well, surely? It seems that you are just trading tit for tat. Maybe the reason is to not utilize some specific resource in the meantime?
My thoughts exactly. I was expecting some revolutionary design with the size of the article and the number of images involved.
Note that I am not saying this is a negative at all. I just found it out of the ordinary and not expected. Although, if the target audience was HN, then there was definitely a lot of wasted effort. :)
To me, it seems that no matter how you take the "messages" to do work, that work still has to be done. It surely doesn't magically use less resources because you told the OS that it could just call you back when it is done, as opposed to you having to hang around? Something has to be hanging around on one side or the other, and the "call back" takes resources as well, surely? It seems that you are just trading tit for tat. Maybe the reason is to not utilize some specific resource in the meantime?