Let’s explore the differences between throttling and debouncing using real-life examples

Imagine a hungry young boy named Robin who loves eating snacks throughout the day. However, his mother, Uma, wants to make sure he doesn’t overindulge in snacks and spoil his appetite for proper meals. She also wants to avoid a situation where he eats too quickly and ends up with a stomach ache.

To implement throttling in this scenario, Uma decides to regulate Robin’s snack consumption. She tells Robin that he can have a snack every hour. This means that no matter how often Robin asks for a snack, he can only have one snack per hour. This strategy helps ensure that Robin’s snacking is controlled, spaced out, and doesn’t interfere with his proper meal times.

Now, consider a situation where Robin’s mother, Uma, is giving him a piece of cake as a treat. Whenever Robin finishes a piece of cake, he excitedly asks for another one immediately, without allowing any time in between.

Uma realizes that Robin’s enthusiasm is causing him to eat the cake too quickly, and she wants to ensure he enjoys each piece thoroughly. She also wants to prevent him from overeating due to his excitement.

To implement debouncing, Uma decides to introduce a pause between serving Robin consecutive pieces of cake. After Robin finishes a piece of cake, Uma tells him that he needs to wait 10 minutes before he can have another slice. This pause gives Robin time to savor the taste, recognize his level of fullness, and prevent him from consuming too much cake in a short span of time.

In the mother-son eating analogy:

• Throttling is like Robin’s mother regulating the frequency of his snack consumption, allowing him to have only one snack every hour to prevent excessive snacking and maintain a healthy eating schedule.
• Debouncing is like Robin’s mother introducing a delay between cake servings, encouraging him to take his time between pieces and preventing him from overindulging due to his eagerness.

Likewise, in coding, choosing between throttling and debouncing is also dependent on the exact behavior you wish to achieve in your application. Throttling is ideal when you want to limit the rate of function calls, but debouncing is appropriate when you want to wait for an idle interval before performing the function.