But now you’re blocking the thread, so if this function is being used by an async function higher up in the function chain, it’s no longer async (unless that is changed as well.

There’s a split, because every step of an async process has to be async/await compatible or you lose all benefit. In a small code base, this might not be a big problem. Where I work it will never realisticly be done.

With project loom we won’t have to do anything or learn anything new. Just upgrade the java runtime and everything just works better :)