Reactive programming is a way to manage asynchronicity by declaring data flows that carry out certain processes on the data passing through them. this data is normally generated asynchronously; it is a way of declaring 'reactions' to change.
At metadrop we have been using it with angular, a framework in which it is strongly integrated thanks to the rxjs library. although not very necessary for simple applications, browser-side applications are becoming more complex and have to manage a lot of asynchronous load, mainly due to user-generated events and the browser's responses to ajax requests.
Through reactive programming and rxjs extensions it is possible to manage asynchronicity in a concise way that is easier to maintain than the traditional approach in a javascript environment.
This session discusses different mechanisms for managing asynchronicity (callbacks, promises) and reactive programming as a clearly superior solution. it explains the concepts needed to understand how it works and presents several examples where you can see how to use it and the advantages it offers over other solutions.
The presentation can be found on the github pages. Unfortunately the video is not yet available.
