Promises and World Peace (mostly Promises)
Look, I was trying to write a blog on Promises and halfway through I realized this whole thing sounds like a UN meeting. So here we are.
Promise.all — The UN Resolution
You know how UN passes a resolution? Every permanent member gotta say yes. One country says "nah I don't feel like it" and the whole thing is dead. That's Promise.all.
Promise.all([usa, russia, china, uk, france])
.then(peace => console.log("wow that actually worked"))
.catch(veto => console.log("see you next year"))
It waits for ALL promises to resolve. But if even one rejects, the whole thing fails. Just like that one country who vetoes everything because they had a upset stomach.
Mein Wada (promise) karta hu kal se gym jaunga ga. aap ke promise or Javascript ke promise mein ek hi farak h o pura karta h ya reject or aap bas bolte ho karte kuch nahi.
The thing is, Promise.all is optimistic by design. It assumes everyone gonna cooperate. Which is cute. Almost naive. Like planning a trip to Goa and expecting everyone to show up.
Promise.race — The Arms Race
This one is exactly what it sounds like. You shoot multiple promises and whoever reaches first wins. The rest? Nobody cares about the rest. They could still be running, they could have failed, doesn't matter. First one across the line takes it.
Promise.race([applyForJobs, finishProject, ragebaitTweet])
.then(result => console.log(result)) // its always the ragebaitweet
Salman, Saif, Akshaye or Lord Bobby bhag rahe h dum laga ke, jeetenge to Bhai hamare yahi h race o bhi Race 3.
This is basically the cold war. Two superpowers doing their thing and the world just sitting there watching who moves first. The scary part is, it doesn't care if the first result is good or bad. It just returns whatever came first. Which honestly explains a lot about geopolitics.
Promise.allSettled — The Swiss Approach
Now this is the mature one. Promise.allSettled doesn't care if promises resolve or reject. It just waits for everyone to finish and gives you a nice report card. No drama, no short circuits, just facts.
Promise.allSettled([trade_deal, climate_pact, border_dispute])
.then(results => results.forEach(r => console.log(r.status)))
// "fulfilled", "rejected", "fulfilled" — noted, moving on
This is Switzerland at every world conflict. They just sitting there with a clipboard like "interesting, interesting, noted." No judgement, no picking sides. Just collecting data and making chocolate.
Not Funny: Switzerland is slow cooked version of Rajat Dalal
You use this when you want to know what happened with everything, even the stuff that went wrong. Like a post-war analysis but without the war part. Very civilized (Sab kuch Shanti Purvak ho Gya h).
Promise.any — The Oil Strategy
Promise.any is the opposite energy of Promise.all. You don't need everyone to succeed. You just need ONE. Any one. Please. Just give me one win.
Promise.any([saudi, venezuela, norway, texas])
.then(oil => console.log("we eating tonight"))
.catch(() => console.log("back to bicycles"))
It only rejects if ALL of them fail. Which is called an AggregateError and honestly that name alone sounds like something you'd hear in a economics summit that nobody wanted to attend.
It's like class mein 10 ladki ko propose kiya koi ek to ha bol de 😭.
Btw sabko yahi bola sirf aap se pyar karta hu.
This is basically every country's energy strategy. You diversify your suppliers because you know at least someone is gonna come through. And if nobody does? Well that error message is going to be very long and very sad.
Quick Cheat Sheet
| Method | Geopolitics | Resolves when | Rejects when |
|---|---|---|---|
| all | UN Resolution | every promise fulfills — resolves with an array of all fulfillment values (in input order) | any promise rejects — rejects immediately with that rejection reason |
| race | Arms Race | the first promise that fulfills (the returned promise fulfills with that value) | the first promise that rejects (the returned promise rejects with that reason) |
| allSettled | Swiss Neutrality | every promise has settled (fulfilled or rejected) — resolves with an array of status objects | never — Promise.allSettled always resolves (never rejects) |
| any | Oil Diversification | the first promise that fulfills — resolves with that fulfillment value | all promises reject — rejects with an AggregateError containing all rejection reasons |
Notes:
Pick Promise.all when you need all results.
use Promise.race when first response is enough but beware of rejecting winners
for forgiving waits use allSettled
for first successful result use Promise.any
The Real Lesson
Promises in JavaScript are basically international relations but with better error handling. In real geopolitics when something fails you get a 3 hour press conference. In JavaScript you get a .catch() block. Honestly the catch block is more useful.
Also if you think about it, async/await is just promises wearing a suit pretending to be synchronous. Which is basically every diplomat at the G7. Acting calm on the outside, absolute chaos internally.
Anyway thats promises. Try it out by yourself. Or don't. I'm a blog post not your manager.
