[E-Lang] E FAQ

[Jonathan A Rees]

   Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 22:22:00 -0700
   From: "Mark S. Miller" <markm@caplet.com>

   I believe all this applies equally well to Actors, Concurrent
   Prolog, Joule, and Toontalk.  We need a name for this category.  If
   partisans of these others don't mind, I propose "Actor-like", since
   Hewitt did it first and almost perfectly.  What other language
   paradigms are in this category?  How would one classify Erlang?
   Mozart?

What do you think of "pure concurrent" languages, by analogy with
"pure functional"?

I'd prefer "actors-like" or "Actors-like" or "actorsish" to
"actor-like", since we're not talking about things that are like an
actor, but rather things that are like an actors-something (language
or model).

Or we could be more aggressive and say "actors-based".

The funny thing is that there was never any particular thing called
"actors".  There was the "actors model of computation," which I think
was an informal notion, but no actors language, just Plasma, Act II,
etc. (what others?).

Is there anything on actors languages online, such as a history or
overview?  And/or can you suggest a canonical reference that I might
find at an MIT library?  I have a Plasma Primer (unpublished;
photocopied from Sussman's personal copy), and I know about Gul Agha's
book on Act II and the references in Henry's "Lieberary" (none
available online), but "actors" always seems like a moving target and
I don't know the best place to look for details.

Jonathan