Reactive Application Development

Chapter 1. What is a reactive application?

This chapter covers

• The changing world of technology
• Applications with massive user bases
• Traditional versus reactive: modeling complex, distributed software
• The Reactive Manifesto

One of the most fascinating things in nature is the ability of a species to adapt to its changing environment. The canonical example is Great Britain’s peppered moth. When newly industrialized Great Britain became polluted in the 19th century, slow-growing, light-colored lichens that covered trees died, resulting in a blackening of the trees’ bark. The impact was quite profound: light-colored peppered moths, which historically were well-camouflaged and in the majority, now found themselves the obvious targets of many a ...