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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

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rdtsc·

> But I found it a little bit weird that they used the term "reactive" in the title

"Reactive" is the new cool term that replaced "async" and "non-blocking" from a few years ago.

For maximum impact it is advised to combine it with microservices (or even unikernels) in the same sentence.

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FWIW, "async" was called the "Reactor Pattern" in the Design Patterns world back in 2000:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactor_pattern

But "(a)ll reactor systems are single threaded by definition"...

So is what we know of as "async" and "non-blocking". The point is that instead of spinning up many blocking threads, a single select/poll/epoll() call triggers a set of callbacks.

I refuse to believe its a "Pattern" until I find a AsyncReactiveReactorFactoryFactory class.

And to completely blow everyone's mind, add 'dockerized'.

ah, thanks for the explanation... I guess we probably need a "new_cool_term" namespace for every new/re-purposed term. Simply use "reactive" to refer to "async" already caused a name collision for me here....

It's not a direct replacement for asynchronous, as reactive implies quite a different set of semantics. The collision is only in your misunderstanding of the pattern. The jargon is meaningful, not marketing.

Good to know. Then the "reactive" mentioned in the title is not exactly async, and not exactly as in "Reactive Extensions" either, so where can I find the intended meaning of "reactive" in that context?

Reactive is "things happen, I don't need to know, async".

Right?

Also add containers to the mix and have a promotion tomorrow

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