What is async/await in Dart?

Why Interviewers Ask This

Foundational questions like this help interviewers calibrate the rest of the interview. A confident, accurate answer signals that you have solid Flutter basics — a prerequisite for any developer role.

Answer

async/await is syntactic sugar for working with Futures in a readable, sequential style without nested callbacks. Marking a function with async makes it return a Future. Using await inside an async function pauses execution at that point until the Future completes, then resumes with the result. Critically, await does not block the UI thread — it suspends only the current async function, freeing the event loop for other work.

Pro Tip

If you're unsure about a detail, say so honestly and explain your reasoning. Interviewers respect candidates who can think through uncertainty rather than bluffing.