what is the future of reactive programming

posts/the-future-of-reactive-programming.md

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+---
+title: What is the future of reactive programming?
+summary: I recently watched an [AMA (Ask Me Anything) video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9si7gK94gLo&t=1156s) between [Brian Goetz](https://twitter.com/briangoetz9), Java Language Architect at Oracle, and [Nicolai Parlog](https://nipafx.dev), Java Developer Advocate at Oracle, where Brian Goetz shared
+  his opinion about the future of reactive programming.
+date_published: 2024-06-13T10:49:43+01:00
+keywords: java,reactive,virtual-threads
+external_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9si7gK94gLo&t=1156s
+---
+
+# [%title]
+
+[%summary]
+
+For Brian, [Loom](https://openjdk.org/projects/loom/) will kill reactive programming, making it a transitional technology.
+On the one hand, reactive programming allows you to have many asynchronous operations going on, way more than the number of threads you have.
+On the other hand, you give up:
+- Control flow statements.
+- The ability to write simple loops.
+- The ability to sequentially debug your code.
+- The ability to get clear stack traces.
+
+The reactive programming tradeoff is not worth it.
+
+This is transcription generated with [Audio Hijack's Trascribe block](https://rogueamoeba.com/support/manuals/audiohijack/?page=transcribe): 
+
+> **What do you see as the future of reactive programming in Java going forward?** 
+>Yeah, so this is a great question. I'm going to give a controversial answer, which some people will like and some people will hate. 
+> I think Loom is going to kill reactive programming. I think we are going to realize very quickly... that reactive programming was a transitional technology. 
+> It was a reaction to a problem that we had, and when that problem is taken away, it will become obvious that this is not the solution, the reactive is not the solution we want, 
+> and I'll explain, 'cause I don't wanna just make a provocative statement and then move on to a different topic. 
+> The problem with Reactive is it gets you one good thing. It gets you this event-driven model that allows you to decouple computations from threads. 
+> So you can have a lot of asynchronous operations going on, way more than the number of threads that you have. 
+> But the cost of it is really high. Basically, you have to give up so much. many things that the language already gives you. 
+> You give up control flow statements. 
+> You give up being able to write simple loops. 
+> You give up having, you know, being able to sequentially debug your code. 
+> You give up being able to get clear stack traces of
+> , how did I get to this point where, you know, I, where I experienced this error, all of those things come for free if you're programming with straightforward, you know, 
+> sequential code, and reactive frameworks take that all away from you. 
+> So they give you one good thing but they take away a bunch of good things that we were all used to and if your code doesn't work, good luck debugging it, and 
+> what Loom does is it takes away a bunch of good things that we were all used to and if your code doesn't work, good luck debugging it. 
+> it says, well, the real bug was not the programming model. The bug was that threads were too expensive, and so I could only create 1,000, 5,000, 10,000. 
+> I can't create a million, and so the, if we just solve that problem of let's make it cheaper to create lots. threads, then people will write just ordinary straightforward sequential code, 
+> and it will, using the control flow techniques they know from the language, and using the debuggers that they've already got in their toolbox, and getting clean stack traces 
+> when there's an error, and it's going to be great, and I think a lot of people will look at React. and say, "Boy, that was, you know, that was a cost and benefit that were not in line."