[jiehong]

I agree with the niche use case.

Using them in production here for 4 years (Akka) with our own actors that dynamically spawn each other depending on the load (along with some messages sent with timers).

You usually have to think about how to correctly handle lost messages or full mailboxes, but once you do, it usually works reliably.

I think actors are more of a low level concurrency Lego block you can use to build higher level stuff with (just like akka streams, etc.)

If you want to use them, I strongly encourage types actors, so unlike Erlang or Elixir and more like Akka or in the Pony language: it really helps with not missing messages because the compiler can make sure you don’t forget anything.

Akka monitoring is not great without paying for the monitoring tool, though.

[lostintangent]

How much of the value in actors do you think is related to the awesomeness of the Akka framework specifically? I only ask since it seems like there’s a decent correlation between people using Akka, and those that identify as using “actors”.

In general, I’m curious whether there’s significant value in someone who is using Node or Python (for example), to look for a way to use the actor pattern. Or if actors are primarily great when used along with platforms that specifically “elevate” this concurrency model? (e.g. Erlang/Elixir, Java/Scala, .NET)