When Should You Use Buffered Channels to Improve Application Responsiveness?

When to Use Buffered Channels for Increased Responsiveness

Buffered channels offer a solution to situations where tasks take varying amounts of time to complete and you want multiple parallel actions to occur seamlessly.

Default Synchronous Channels

The code below illustrates a scenario where synchronous channels create a bottleneck:

func main() {
    c := make(chan string)
    go longLastingProcess(c)
    go longLastingProcess(c)
    go longLastingProcess(c)
    fmt.Println(<-c)
}

In this example, each longLastingProcess sleeps for 2 seconds before sending a message to the channel. The main routine is blocked waiting for a message from the channel, which means it cannot perform any other tasks while the processes are running.

Buffered Channels

By using a buffered channel, multiple processes can send messages to the channel without blocking. This is achieved by setting a buffer size when creating the channel, such as:

c := make(chan string, 3)

With a buffer size of 3, the main routine can continue running even if all 3 processes are still running. The messages sent by the processes are stored in the buffer until they are retrieved by the main routine.

Use Cases for Buffered Channels

One common use case for buffered channels is when modeling task queues. A task scheduler can deposit jobs into the queue without waiting for a worker to complete a previous job. The worker threads can consume jobs from the queue as they become available.

Practical Benefits of Increasing Buffer Size

Increasing the buffer size beyond the minimum required can further enhance responsiveness. It allows the scheduler to schedule multiple jobs in quick succession without having to wait for workers to complete. This can be particularly beneficial in scenarios where tasks are highly variable and may take longer than expected to complete.

By carefully considering the buffer size, developers can optimize their code to handle asynchronous tasks efficiently while ensuring the overall responsiveness of the application.

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