Reactive is a way of thinking about systems architecture and design. It’s a set of principles for creating cohesive systems that work as a whole, rather than a collection of individual services cobbled together without thought–even though each service may be great in its own right. This is like an athletic team composed of exceptional individuals–they’re good in their own right, but they need to be able to work together to compete against superior teams. Learn more mr-mag.com

Reactive is an asynchronous programming paradigm that deals with data streams and the propagation of change. It’s important for building applications that are resilient, scalable and able to manage variable loads. Reactive systems use observer and handler functions. Observer functions recognize changes and generate messages to signal they’ve happened, while handlers take action and evoke appropriate responses.

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This example watches a text input for keypresses, using RxJS (a reactive JavaScript library). It uses the reactive operators map, filter, and throttleTime to transform the stream of events into the characters pressed, eliminate empty keypresses, and to limit the frequency of new events to 500 milliseconds. The output of the stream is then sent to a console.

Reactive people are always ready to react, but they don’t act on their own initiative. They think that stimulus and response are inextricably linked, so they let their circumstances or the actions of others control them. This can be a hard habit to break, especially when you’re surrounded by people with different viewpoints. It takes energy to rise above the petty disagreements, to see the big picture and take proactive steps to make a difference.