--- title: "A New Paradigm: \"Continuations\"?" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/18/a-new-paradigm-quotcontinuationsquot.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/18/a-new-paradigm-quotcontinuationsquot.html" published: "2004-03-18T15:04:00" updated: "2004-03-18T15:04:00" tags: [".Net Quotations"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "I wonder just how much anyone has heard about this idea: Continuation based web applications (link via Cincom ) As I understand it, continuations allow your web application to jump forward between states after each…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # A New Paradigm: "Continuations"? By Roy Osherove March 18, 2004 In [.Net Quotations](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-quotations) **Historical article** · Originally published March 18, 2004; technical details may be outdated. I wonder just how much anyone has heard about this idea: [Continuation based web applications](http://bitsko.slc.ut.us/blog/2004/03/04) (link via [Cincom](http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3257060855)) As I understand it, continuations allow your web application to jump forward between states after each button click or link click, when the previous states are always saved, so the “back” button **always** works. For example, you can fill a shopping cart, hit submit, and before you confirm just hit back and continue adding stuff to the cart (i.e your page is saved with all the values you entered, and it;s not up to you to prey to the browser gods that everything will still work when you hit back, this is **guaranteed**). Still, the code on the developer's side stays event driven just as it was before. If I gather correctly, I'm looking at a mix and match of: - ASP.Net event model (event driven paradigm), only with full client support of these events? - UIP application block process model Now, here's the catch: the mainstream languages, .Net and  Java do not support this. What I've listed here is found in languages such as Smalltalk and Scheme. I wonder if there's a chance we'll see this technology in our side of the fence anytime soon (soon being a very general term here)... ## More in .Net Quotations [All posts in .Net Quotations](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-quotations) - Mar 19, 2004 ### [Searching Borland and MS newsgroups even if your firewall won't let you use a newsreader.](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/19/searching-borland-and-ms-newsgroups-even-if-your-firewall-wo.html) - Mar 18, 2004 ### [Good DPAPI helper and Matt Griffith's awesome .NET Utilities DLL and more](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/18/good-dpapi-helper-and-matt-griffiths-awesome-net-utilities-d.html) - Mar 18, 2004 ### [Important Developer Implications: Windows XP Service Pack 2](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/18/important-developer-implications-windows-xp-service-pack-2.html) - Mar 18, 2004 ### [Comments in Regular Expressions](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/18/comments-in-regular-expressions.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/