Tickers

Canonical guidance

• use tickers for repeated work, timers for one-shot waits
• stop tickers you create when the owner is done
• make periodic work cancellable

Use when

• polling loops
• periodic flush or cleanup work
• background heartbeats

Avoid

• using tickers for single delayed events
• forgetting to stop a ticker in bounded workflows
• assuming ticker cadence stays exact under load

Preferred pattern

ticker := time.NewTicker(30 * time.Second)
defer ticker.Stop()

Anti-pattern

• starting a ticker in a goroutine with no cancellation path and no clear owner

Explanation: This anti-pattern is tempting because periodic work looks harmless, but it quietly creates runaway background loops.

Why

• ticker lifecycle is resource management, not just syntax