while true with delay

Question

I normally use infinite loop as in the way below:

public static boolean start = false;

while(!start) {
    doMyLogic();
}

but a friend said you need to have a small delay inside the while-true loop (like bellow), otherwise it may tend to cause memory issues and also it is not a good practice.

Suggested way:

while(!start) { 
    Thread.sleep(few_miliseconds);  // 500 ms
    doMyLogic();
}

Kindly advise me the impact of suggested way. Am I doing it right?

Answer 1

I would use a ScheduledExecutorService

ScheduledExecutorService service = Executors.newSingleThreadScheduledExecutor();
service.scheduleAtFixedRate(new Runnable() {
    @Override
    public void run() {
        doMyLogic();
    }
}, 500, 500, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);

This service can be re-used for many repeating or delayed tasks and can be shutdown() as required.