* asynchronously-computed intermediate value, or else an exception that indicates the failure or
 * cancellation of the operation so far. The only way to extract the value or exception from a step
 * is by declaring that step to be the last step of the pipeline. Nevertheless, we refer to the
 * "value" of a successful step or the "result" (value or exception) of any step.
 *
 * <ol>

 * asynchronously-computed intermediate value, or else an exception that indicates the failure or
 * cancellation of the operation so far. The only way to extract the value or exception from a step
 * is by declaring that step to be the last step of the pipeline. Nevertheless, we refer to the
 * "value" of a successful step or the "result" (value or exception) of any step.
 *
 * <ol>