Reactive concurrent programming revisited

TL;DR

This paper revisits reactive programming, analyzing its evolution from synchronous models like Esterel, discussing research developments over the past decade, and highlighting open questions for future exploration.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of reactive programming's evolution, identifying key research directions and unresolved issues since its inception.

Findings

Reactive programming has evolved significantly over the past decade.

Several research directions have been explored in reactive programming.

Open questions remain regarding the future development of reactive models.

Abstract

In this note we revisit the so-called reactive programming style, which evolves from the synchronous programming model of the Esterel language by weakening the assumption that the absence of an event can be detected instantaneously. We review some research directions that have been explored since the emergence of the reactive model ten years ago. We shall also outline some questions that remain to be investigated.