Suspending over blocking
9 min
This article aims to show how to use Kotlin Coroutines and remove Reaxtive eXtensions (Rx).
Benefits
To start let's consider four benefits of Coroutines over Rx:
Suspending over Blocking
To run non-blocking code using Rx you'd write something like this:
Observable.interval(1, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
.subscribe {
textView.text = "$it seconds have passed"
}Which is effectively creating a new thread. Threads are heavy objects in terms of memory and performance.
Both are critical in the mobile development world.
You can achieve the same behavior using the following snippet:
launch {
var i = 0
while (true){
textView.text = "${it++} seconds have passed"
delay(1000)
}
}Essentially, Coroutines are light-weight threads but we don't create any real thread.
Here we are using non-blocking delay() function, which is a special suspending function that does not block a thread but suspends the Coroutine.
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