Reactor Pattern
The Reactor Pattern is a design pattern used in concurrent programming to handle service requests delivered concurrently to an application by one or more clients. It demultiplexes incoming events and dispatches them synchronously to the appropriate request handlers, enabling efficient management of multiple I/O operations without blocking threads. This pattern is fundamental for building scalable network servers and event-driven systems.
Developers should learn the Reactor Pattern when building high-performance, scalable network applications, such as web servers, chat servers, or real-time data processing systems, where handling many simultaneous connections with minimal resource usage is critical. It's particularly useful in scenarios requiring non-blocking I/O, as it avoids the overhead of thread-per-connection models, improving throughput and reducing latency in event-driven architectures.