Any halfway experienced JavaScripter is familiar with the setTimeout function. It takes two arguments: a function, and a number n. It will delay calling the function until n milliseconds (give or take a few) have passed. The delay is performed asynchronously. This means that the rest of your program will not halt while the timeout is ticking down.

SetTimeout provides a building block for many other useful patterns appearing in typical JavaScript development. In this article, I will document a few that I use frequently. I am interested in hearing what setTimeout patterns you have found useful in the comments.

Nick Fitzgerald on useful setTimeout patterns, including forcing anything to execute asynchronously. Example:

function async (fn) {

    setTimeout(fn, 20);

}