How and when to use ‘async’ and ‘await’

Question

From my understanding one of the main things that async and await do is to make code easy to write and read - but is using them equal to spawning background threads to perfo

Answer 1

Further to the other answers, have a look at await (C# Reference)

and more specifically at the example included, it explains your situation a bit

The following Windows Forms example illustrates the use of await in an async method, WaitAsynchronouslyAsync. Contrast the behavior of that method with the behavior of WaitSynchronously. Without an await operator applied to a task, WaitSynchronously runs synchronously despite the use of the async modifier in its definition and a call to Thread.Sleep in its body.

private async void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    // Call the method that runs asynchronously.
    string result = await WaitAsynchronouslyAsync();

    // Call the method that runs synchronously.
    //string result = await WaitSynchronously ();

    // Display the result.
    textBox1.Text += result;
}

// The following method runs asynchronously. The UI thread is not
// blocked during the delay. You can move or resize the Form1 window 
// while Task.Delay is running.
public async Task WaitAsynchronouslyAsync()
{
    await Task.Delay(10000);
    return "Finished";
}

// The following method runs synchronously, despite the use of async.
// You cannot move or resize the Form1 window while Thread.Sleep
// is running because the UI thread is blocked.
public async Task WaitSynchronously()
{
    // Add a using directive for System.Threading.
    Thread.Sleep(10000);
    return "Finished";
}