Processing Camera while (!cam.available()) question

hi all, I've got a basic file to simply start the camera on Processing, I've made a gist here: https://gist.github.com/bodaz/a5ede0ea44b614e01d62edc6436135cd

and these line of code confusing me a bit:

while(!cam.available()) { print(); // needed }

I'm aware this is for the preparation work while to wait for the cameras to be available, the questions I have is:

1. why is print() needed else the camera won't appear in the code.
2. can I re-write this in an async form? Not liking the code where nothing happens while we just wait..