Chapter 1. Introducing Akka

In this chapter

  • Why scaling is hard
  • Write once, scale anywhere
  • Introduction to the actor programming model
  • Akka actors
  • What is Akka?

Up until the middle of the ’90s, just before the internet revolution, it was completely normal to build applications that would only ever run on a single computer, a single CPU. If an application wasn’t fast enough, the standard response would be to wait for a while for CPUs to get faster; no need to change any code. Problem solved. Programmers around the world were having a free lunch, and life was good.

In 2005 Herb Sutter wrote in Dr. Dobb’s Journal about the need for a fundamental change (link: http://www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm). In short: a limit to increasing ...

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