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

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!

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