The Report Of Twisted’s Death

Historically, there has been no “standard way” of doing asynchronous I/O in Python. A variety of solutions, from using threads (WSGI), processes (multiprocessing), green threads (gevent), or selector loops (Tornado, Twisted) have all been used to similar degrees, but apart from the (now deprecated) standard library asyncore/asynchat, Python itself did not have a blessed option.

PEP 3156, or “the asyncio PEP”, introduced in Python 3.4, provides this blessed option, choosing a standard selector loop approach (or “reactor”, in Twisted parlance). The role of asyncio may seem muddled in the eyes of developers new to asynchronous programming, or those that may not understand the technical details of asyncio nor the political environment in which it was created. This talk will teach you how Twisted or Tornado supplement asyncio, how asyncio can/is integrated with these frameworks, and makes a case for the continued development of new and existing selector-loop based frameworks. It will also paint a picture of the future direction of Twisted, why the original plan of asyncio as a standard API has not come to complete fruition, and what can be done about it.