JavaScript development is inherently done as a single execution thread with gratutious use of events to prevent blocking. The end result of the most common method, callbacks, is difficult to read code and a decidedly difficult to read codebase for developers used to most blocking procedural languages. Promises, added natively to Node in the 4.x release, offer a better way to handle the parallel operation of blocking operations in an asynchronous environment. Recorded: Thursday, September 22nd 2016