DIY Actors Using Project Loom - Alternatives to Akka for Scala Developers

Explore a practical alternative to Akka actors in this conference talk that demonstrates how to create DIY actors using Project Loom. Learn how to implement key features of actors, such as sequential message processing and spawning large numbers of actors on JVM threads, by combining Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor and virtual threads from Loom. Discover how to create a simple ActorRef and Actor API, handle Future callbacks within actors without race conditions, and apply these principles for local state management in non-actor Scala classes. Compare this approach to Akka actors by porting examples and understand how this solution can simplify your code while avoiding licensing issues. While this method may not cover all features of akka-actors like supervision and fault tolerance, it offers a viable option for applications that don't require these advanced functionalities.

Mushtaq Ahmed - DIY Actors using Project Loom