index.md

---
title: Synchronous
slug: Glossary/Synchronous
page-type: glossary-definition
---

{{GlossarySidebar}}

**Synchronous** refers to real-time communication where each party receives (and if necessary, processes and replies to) messages instantly (or as near to instantly as possible).

A human example is the telephone — during a telephone call you tend to respond to another person immediately.

Many programming commands are also synchronous — for example when you type in a calculation, the environment will return the result to you instantly, unless you program it not to.

## See also

- Related glossary terms:
  - {{glossary("Asynchronous")}}
- [Asynchronous JavaScript](/en-US/docs/Learn/JavaScript/Asynchronous)