Your Mouse is a Database: Asynchronous Data Streams and Rx

2025-04-10

This article explores using Rx (Reactive Extensions) to handle asynchronous data streams. The author argues that modern web and mobile applications heavily rely on asynchronous and real-time data streams, and Rx provides an elegant way to coordinate and orchestrate these streams. By comparing traditional database technologies with Rx, the article explains how Rx treats asynchronous computations as first-class citizens and uses a fluent API for efficient data stream composition and transformation. Finally, the author demonstrates Rx's power with a simple Ajax autocomplete example and briefly touches on Rx's relationship to Monads.

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