akka.net fundamentals — #prognet15

@petabridge Petabridge.com

@AkkaDotNet - #ProgNet15

Andrew Skotzko Co-‐founder — Petabridge


What do you want?


What You’ll Get Today

•  Understand actor model •  New possibilities

•  Hands-on: learn Akka.NET fundamentals

•  Glimpse where this could take you


Why should we care about

concurrency?


1970 -‐ 2005


TANSTAAFL “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” —R. A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress


What the hell are you talking about?


Concurrency.

We needs it.


So why is this hard?


How to Write Multithreaded Code


Shared State Programming Sucks (Illustrated)


Random?

•  .NET 4.0: TPL (2010) •  .NET 4.5: async/await (2012)


Is there a better way? THERE MUST BE! THERE. MUST. BE. A. BETTER. WAY!


Warning! Mind Blowingly Different

Programming Style Ahead!


Warning! Mind Blowingly Different Programming Style Ahead!


The Actor Model


What is the actor model?


Everything is an actor.


3 Core Abilities

1.  Send messages 2. Create other actors 3. Change behavior


Messages


Actors work by passing each other messages


Message passing in action


BUZZWORD BINGO!


Example Akka.NET Message


Actors send messages to addresses


Actor addresses have location transparency


Which means…


ReactiveManifesto.org


What is Akka.NET?


Battle-Tested (JVM)


This is an actor


These are messages


Actors run on threads


Actors are lazy


Process messages one at a time


The circle of life


Hierarchies


Supervision


Switchable Behavior


And Can Form Highly Available Systems


Actors Vs.

C# Classes


What’s this give me?


Where can I use this? •  Analytics systems •  Marketing automation •  Multi-player games •  Device / IoT tracking •  Alerting & monitoring systems •  Recommendation engines •  Dynamic pricing •  Reactive UI


DEMO


10min break


EXERCISE: Port Tail from *nix to Windows.


Materials haps://petabridge.com/cheatsheet


Make ActorSystem + First Actors


Define first messages


Props & IActorRefs


Hierarchies & Child Actors


Hierarchies pt. deux


Character Actor Pattern


ActorSelecgon


ActorSelection == selection by address


Actor Lifecycle


Actor lifecycle


Next Steps

1)  Use your cheatsheet! 2)  Finish Bootcamp 3)  Use Giaer chat 4)  Get your prize!


Get your prize!

haps://petabridge.com/prognet


THANK YOU!

Email: [email protected]

Twiaerz: @askotzko

@AkkaDotNet


hap://LearnAkka.net

akka.net fundamentals — #prognet15

Technology

actor addresses

process messages

actors work

available systems

actor model new possibilities

better way

state programming sucks

prognet15 andrewskotzko