In Chapter 11, An Introduction to the Akka and Actor Models, we discovered the actor model and how Akka implements it.
The original actor paper states three possible actions that actors can perform as computational units:
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- They can send messages to other known actors
- They can create new actors
- They can designate behavior for future message processing
Because of the universality of this model, the specifics of how these points are to be implemented depends on the hardware, operating system, programming language, existing libraries, and ultimately on the design choices of the implementer. Akka Typed offers a slightly different programming model compared to untyped Akka.
Furthermore, in this chapter, we'll refer to normal Akka as Akka untyped to be specific about which library is being mentioned, even though untyped Akka was always named just Akka in the previous chapter.
Let's take a closer look at the differences and similarities between the two implementations.