What does it mean for a method to be asynchronous?

Question

What is an asynchronous method. I think I know, but I keep confusing it with parallelism. I\'m not sure what the difference between an asynchronous method is and what parallel

Answer 1

Say you need to clean the house, cook the dinner and put the children to bed.

Synchronous:

You clean the house, then cook dinner, then put the children to bed.

Parallel:

You hire 3 people to clean the house, cook dinner and put the children to bed. But you don't trust them so keep a supervisory role, looking over them and waiting for them to finish. Only when they've all finished do they get paid.

Asynchronous:

You one child to clean the house and another to cook dinner. When each have finished their chores they put themselves to bed, while you put your feet up with a glass of wine in front of the tv.