Update documentation

[alexandru]

Monifu needs good documentation and the current documentation is expired. The documentation needs to be updated and touch on the following subjects:

• the contract of Observable and Observer
• the API of Observable, Observer and Schedule (operators, builders)
• usage of provided utilities that are orthogonal to Rx
• tutorials, using introtorx.com as inspiration

This is an epic task that needs to be ready for 1.0.
Prior tickets on this issue:

• monifu/monifu.js#6 (the original)
• monifu/monifu.js#3
• issue A wish for a wiki entry on reactive application design #31

[l15k4]

Hi, would you please share a little of your experience in regards to JS analogy to JVM Garbage Collection? For example is there a difference between :

class OuterFoo {
    Observable.interval(500.millis).foreach { tick =>
      if (tick % 2 == 0)
        println("foo")
      else
        println("bar")
    }
}

and :

class OuterFoo {
    Observable.interval(500.millis).foreach { tick =>
      if (tick % 2 == 0)
        myElementRef.style.visibility = "visible"
      else
        myElementRef.style.visibility = "hidden"
    }
}

I guess the first will be running until the OuterFoo is freed and the latter would additionally depend on the myElementRef freeing in foreach function, right? I really hope OuterFoo is GCed when nothing holds a reference to it.

I try to read up a little bit about JS GC, but I'm not feeling any wiser now. There used to be a note in Wiki about this, but I can't find it anywhere. Imho it got lost.

[alexandru]

@l15k4 initiating an interval tick by means of Observable.interval is triggering the Scheduler to do that, which happens by means of setTimeout. This means that the observable in question, along with the observer that subscribed to it, will NOT get garbage collected until the observable in question is complete. And in your example it's an infinite stream, so it stays active until you somehow cancel it. Note that in Javascript, even if you wanted, you couldn't implement something smarter than that. This is because in Javascript there is no support for weak references.

So btw, both examples behave in the same way, there's absolutely no difference. Both will be running until the end of time, starting with a new OuterFoo of course. And OuterFoo does not get garbage collected btw.

And personally I prefer that, because I wouldn't want the garbage collector to somehow stop the streaming of values that I care about. But please do describe a use-case.

[l15k4]

@alexandru thank you for explanation, I personally prefer that behavior too, I just wasn't sure it really behaves this way.

[alexandru]

We already started the documentation project as part of - https://monix.io