Is 'Reactive Programming' the new OOP ?


To Be Reactive

Lately I attended the Codemotion event in Rome where i heard very interesting talks and many of them were related at the "Reactive Programming" that is the way to develop application that follow the rules stated in the "Reactive Manifesto".  Below such talks:
Jonas Bonér has dived us  in "Building Reactive apps with Akka and Java 8" 
Massimiliano Dessì  on "Vert.X polyglot and reactive on JVM""
Matteo Collina on "MQTT and Node.js - Messaging the Internet of Things"


From a while seems that the talks,questions and thoughts upon Reactive Programming (joined with Functional Programming) are dominating the development scene.

Yet another OOP ?

I have been programming long enough to remember when OOP was new. It’s funny how similar the arguments against OOP and Reactive Programming are. Object oriented concepts where used long before anyone gave a name to it. Now OOP is taken for granted and assumed that all languages should be able to produce objects.
Now, same fate seems to be for the "Reactive Programming" .... 

Why Reactive ?

But the main questions seem to be:
  • Why do I need Reactive Programming? 
  • Can I do the same thing with … ?
I've find out the follow answer at these questions that, in my opinion, perfectly summarise the "Reactive Programming" essence. 

No one is claiming that Reactive Programming is a new discovery or requires a special language or library. Reactive Programming is simply a concept to raise the abstraction level so you don’t have to re-implement a reactive system every time.[1]

Reactive Programming is not simply a fad but a method to help you build concurrent/parallel code. In years to come, new languages will include Reactive Programming methods as part of the core language. In fact, the change has already started.



Conclusion


I'm fascinated by the pair of Functional & Reactive Programming and i started to deal with Vert.x (i love polyglot support) and for my Proof Of Concept I've chosen as PAAS the Open Shift by Red Hat


My intention is to publish other posts about this new development experience in order to give you some feedback related to this new frontier


Enjoy the Reactiveness





[1] Inspired by Reactive Programming is the New OOP Posted by Matt Carkci


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