In a lot of multclient java programs people use a separate thread which only receives the messages from the server. Is it really necessary? Why can't it be done in the main thread? What should be the problem?
For me a separate thread to receive the messages from the server is not that necessary, it could be done simply be the main.
Am I wrong?
After 6 years I would like to answer myself of the past.
Some more context: the multi-client chat is a GUI chat that used swing. It was a high school project.
The main method would go in a loop to read messages received from a server. Since every other client action is event-based, the event handling would be done on a separate thread anyway.
So yeah, it worked fabulously at the time!