Unexpected Behavior When Using setTimeout Inside a Loop with Async/Await in Node.js
This might be a silly question, but I'm facing an issue where I expect a series of asynchronous operations to complete in a specific order, but they seem to run out of order. Here's what I'm trying to accomplish: I have a loop that performs a database operation asynchronously, and I want to ensure that each operation finishes before the next one starts. I've implemented this using `async/await` along with `setTimeout` to simulate a delayed response. However, I'm getting unexpected results, where some operations finish before others even when they are supposed to be sequential. Here’s a simplified version of my code: ```javascript const performAsyncOperation = async (id) => { return new Promise(resolve => { setTimeout(() => { console.log(`Operation ${id} completed`); resolve(id); }, Math.random() * 1000); }); }; const runOperationsSequentially = async () => { for (let i = 1; i <= 5; i++) { await performAsyncOperation(i); } }; runOperationsSequentially(); ``` When I run this code, I see the completion messages in the console not following the expected sequential order. For instance, I might see `Operation 3 completed` before `Operation 1 completed`, which is confusing given that I'm awaiting each operation. I expected the operations to finish in the order they were initiated. I've tried using a simple `for` loop instead of `forEach`, and even tried adding a static delay instead of `setTimeout`, but the issue persists. Is there something I'm overlooking in how promises and the event loop work in this context? Any insights or recommendations would be appreciated! This is part of a larger CLI tool I'm building.