Re: [boost] Is there any interest in a library for actor programming? [preliminary submission]

Subject: Re: [boost] Is there any interest in a library for actor programming? [preliminary submission]
From: Matthias Vallentin (vallentin_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-05-15 19:53:25

(Disclaimer: I'm a libcppa user for quite a while now.)

> attached you'll find the first preliminary submission for Boost.Actor
> as ZIP file along with the Manual in PDF version. 

I would like to express my full support for Boost.Actor. The number one
reason why I believe we need the library in Boost, is that the library
raises the level abstraction for concurrent and network-transparent
message passing in a type-safe manner. It provides a framework allowing
users to efficiently harness (i) all available cores on a modern
multi-core machine, (ii) general-purpose clusters, and (iii) the compute
power of graphics card via OpenCL [1].

My own experiences with libcppa:

    - Quick round-trips on mailing list and during bug reports

    - Low CPU overhead (<=5%)

    - Works robust and stable since 0.9

In the past, I attempted to build a similar abstraction out of 0mq and
Boost.Asio, with mildly put, limited success. Therefore I am thrilled to
see someone attempting to implement the actor model natively The Right
Way.

By adopting the library in Boost, users would receive a tool to express
their concurrent and distributed programs while focussing on the
challenges of their domain, as opposed to grappling with low-level
intricacies of data structure synchronization and threading. Personally,
I found it immensely productive to not having to worry about data races
anymore, as these are eradicated by design.

     Matthias

[1] This is a feature of libcppa and not planned for Boost.Actor,
    although the functionality should remain in some form.