What does RxJS.Observable debounce do?

Debounce will emit a value after a specified time interval has passed without another value being emitted.

Using simple diagrams the following may provide greater help:

Stream 1 | ---1-------2-3-4-5---------6----

    after debounce, the emitted stream looks like as follows:

Stream 2 | ------1-------------5---------6-

The intermediate items (in this case, 2,3,4) are ignored.

An example is illustrated below:

var Rx = require('rx-node');
var source = Rx.fromStream(process.stdin).debounce(500);
var subscription = source.subscribe(
    function (x) {
        console.log('Next: %s', x);
    }
);

I used node to illustrate this... assuming you have node installed, you can run it by typing

$node myfile.js  (where the aforementioned code is in myfile.js)

Once this node program is started you can type values at the console -- if you type quickly items are ignored, and if type intermittently fast and slow items will appear after a gap in typing (in the example above I have 500ms) at the console ("Next: ")

There is also some excellent reference material at https://github.com/Reactive-Extensions/RxJS/blob/master/doc/api/core/operators/debounce.md

Long story short: debounce waits for X time that the stream isn't emitting any new value, then let the latest value pass.

Long story: Once a value is emitted, debounce will pause its emission for X time to see if another value is emitted, in fact blocking the stream during this time. If a new value is emitted during the debounce time then the timer is restarted and debounce waits again for the full time. If its timer expires without any new value being emitted, it let the latest value pass.

Let's say that you want to add autocomplete to an input box. If the user insert "a" you may want to show him the choices "acorn, alaska", but if the user right after press "l" you would propose just "alaska". In this case it's better to wait for the user to stop pressing the keyboards to avoid doing unnecessary work. debounce it's the right tool here: it waits for X time the the stream isn't emitting any new value