[1] http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3988
Rx is a one trick pony that focuses exclusively on the duality between event streams and data streams. Management of time in any real sense is completely missing from the framework. No continuous bindings, control flow must all be buried as data flow, etc...
React is a much better solution for writing reactive programs than Rx.
Are you speaking about React.js? Erik's point about reactive being a buzzword and distorted is proven by that because it's not the same thing at all. React.js is cool and all that but it has nothing to do with guaranteed composition and dealing with side-effects and monadic operators. That's like saying Angular.js is better than list operations and functions that operate on lists.
[1] http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=37508&CFID=356264587&CFTOK... [2] http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Expert-to-Expert-R...
My point was that if you were building user interfaces, react would get you much further than Rx, which is a hammer looking for a problem where it is actually better.
If you want the ability to deal with side effects, I'm working that in my own work while avoiding burying everything in data flow:
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=2112...
Ironically, I started this work while working for Martin with the goal of making the scala compiler more "reactive" (the ability to responsively react to change); I actually succeeded while making minimal changes to scalac. Like actors or FRP, Rx can't be applied to scalac either, which desperately needs to be reactive to fit into the IDE. Rx's idea of reactivity revolves around event streams, virtual, managed time and frameworks like react attack the problem of change directly. Erik is right about useless definitions, but one based around change really works.
