Asynchronous programming with callbacks, like in JavaScript, was a good idea. But sometimes, I wanted an escape hatch to write synchronous functions for reading and writing files or waiting on a timer. Oak improves on this by offering both synchronous and asynchronous versions of all the blocking built-in functions, and light syntax support with the <code>with</code> syntax sugar for callbacks.</li></ul><h2>Inventing <em>with</em> Oak</h2><p>Oak is a general-purpose programming language, but it's designed (