How do async and await improve asynchronous programming?

The async and await keywords simplify asynchronous programming by allowing developers to write asynchronous code that looks and behaves like synchronous code. The async keyword is used to mark a method as asynchronous, while await is used to pause the execution of the method until the awaited task completes. This improves code readability and maintainability, reduces callback complexity, and helps avoid blocking the main thread, thus keeping applications responsive.