One significant difference between message-passing in Erlang and the pure Actor Model is the Erlang concept of mailboxes. Actors don’t have mailboxes, at least not in the sense that they can be queried. Messages simply arrive at some non-deterministic time after they are asynchronously sent, invoking the current behavior of the actor. However, in Erlang, […]
15
Jul
2011
In-Order Message Delivery
The Actor Model explicitly avoids placing constraints on message delivery order beyond causality [1]. Messages may not be delivered before the message which caused them to be sent. In other words, time can’t flow backward. Beyond that, messages arrive in a non-deterministic order. This can sometimes have surprising consequences. Two messages sent in sequence from […]
17
Jun
2010
Actors in Clojure – Why Not?
Tags: actor, blocking, Clojure, data-flow, deadlock, debugging, distribution, Erlang, functional, protocol, scalability, value
In his article about state management in Clojure, Rich Hickey discusses his reasons for choosing not to use the Erlang-style actor model. While Erlang has made some implementation choices that can lead to problems, the problems are not intrinsic to the Actor Model. As the actor implementation with the longest history of success, Erlang naturally […]