Episode 80

This week on Herding Code, the guys speak with Jeffrey van Gogh and Matt Podwysocki about the Reactive Extensions for Javascript.

• Matt talks about how he's been involved with RxJS.
• Jeffrey talks about how RxJS and Reactive Extensions came out of the the Volta project.
• Matt talks about how RxJS simplifies the callback model in Javascript.
• Jeffery adds on how this also has benefits to asynchronous operations.
• Jon asks about how this works with queries over events which will happen in the future.
• Mat talks about how this works with jQuery's bind and live events.
• Jon asks the standard question about querying over mouse move events. Matt and Jeffrey use the example to explain about how composable operations over events can be really powerful.
• Jon asks how Reactive Extensions relates to functional reactive programming, and to functional programming in general.
• Kevin asks about how RxJS interoperates with jQuery.
• We take questions from Twitter about jQuery integration and use of RxJS to manage script loading and script scoping.
• Kevin asks for some concrete usage examples.
• Kevin asks about the library size and the overall release status.
• Jon asks about Jeffrey's blog posts on using RxJS with Node.js and Script#.
• We talk about Matt's extensive blog post series on RxJS.
• We talk about recent RxJS presentations: Erik Meijer's talk at MIX10, Jeffrey's talk at JSConf, and Matt's at the Imagine Cup.
• Jon asks about what exactly is involved in adding RxJS support to different Javascript libraries.
• Scott K asks about the tradeoffs of bringing the CLR to the browser vs. bringing things like RxJS into the browser via Javascript.
• We talk about how Javascript development has gotten easier with development environment improvements, testing systems, etc.
• Matt talks about how it's often easier to do things in Javascript than in a statically typed language like C#.
• Scott K asks about how scope is handled in RxJS.
• Jon asks about how the code is licensed.
• Kevin asks about the naming conventions used in RxJS, supported browsers, release plans.
• Jon asks about Reactive Extensions for .NET, and we talk about how it's especially useful in Silverlight.
• Jeffery mentions that Reactive Extensions will be included in Windows Phone 7.
• We pretend to end the show, but the discussion keeps going and K Scott joins the party.

Show Links:

• Matt Podwysocki's Blog
• Jeffrey van Gogh, Reactive Extensions 
• Microsoft Live Labs Volta
• JSConf EU 2010
• Rey Bango's Blog, JSConf 2010 - Video Interviews with Top Javascript Developers
• YUI
• 280 North, Socratic Documentation Tool
• Node.js
• Script#
• Imagine Cup
• Erik Meijer
• Rhino
• John Resig, Sizzle
• WebSharp

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 80: RxJS with Jeffrey van Gogh and Matt Podwysocki