concurrency

Most programs provide an “Autosave” feature these days. The feature gives the user a chance to minimize the amount of work lost due to some unforeseen mishap, like a sudden power outage. When I write a program in Clojure that requires such a feature, I have the entire Java library at my disposal. I usually create something based on a ScheduledExecutorService – something that watches for a change in the document then allows a certain amount of user inactivity to pass before automatically saving the document.

Recently, I answered a question on StackOverflow related to executing a long-running task in the background of a JavaFX application while updating the UI on the progress of that task. I have found myself coming back to that solution several times now.