The .NET platform's last major releases prominently feature improved concurrency tools and keywords, and that's no accident. In a world where developers are expected to build applications that are consistently responsive across a wide range of devices, user experiences, and workloads knowing how to take full advantage of the power of concurrent programming is essential. But let's face it: even with nice tools like the TPL and async / await, multi-threaded concurrent programming has typically been a bottomless pit of despair, Heisenbugs, and lessons learned the hard way. None of this is true with Akka.NET and the actor model: a powerful programming methodology that makes building concurrent applications easy, fun, and much more powerful than what we had before.

2. CONCURRENCY WITHOUT
THE PAIN: INTRODUCTION
TO AKKA.NET - AARON
STANNARD

3. About Me @Aaronontheweb
• .NET Developer since 2005
• Worked at Microsoft (Developer Evangelism)
• CEO and Founder of MarkedUp Analytics (Big Data +
Windows client)
• OSSed lots of .NET infrastructure software @ MarkedUp
• Akka.NET, Helios, and others
• Started Petabridge in 2015
• Commercial support for Akka.NET
• Customers include Bank of America, Dell, Boeing, McGraw Hill
Financial, Balfour Beatty, B+D, and lots of others

4. High Expectations for Backend Developers

5. And the obvious ways to
scale are wrong.

6. Enterprise CRUD App

7. Scenario 1: Surge in User Activity

8. Obvious Solution: Sharding

9. Brittle

10. New App Requirements

11. Multithreaded Proc

12. New App Requirements

13. How to Write Multithreaded Code

14. Shared State Programming Sucks (Illustrated)

15. Enter the Actor Model

16. Akka.NET implements the actor model

17. Actor Model Core Concepts

18. What's an Actor?

19. What's an Actor?

20. Actors have internal state

21. Actor state is always private,
modified when handling
messages, only shared via
immutable messages

22. Actors process messages serially

23. Many actors can process messages
concurrently

24. Many actors can process messages
concurrently

25. Actors are lazy
• No messages? No work.
• Only one message at a time
• 1 thread = thousands of actors
• Because actors only do a small
amount of work each time

26. Actor lifecycle phases

27. Actor lifecycle phases,(with methods)

28. Actors live in a family tree

29. Actors on the Network

30. Communicate with Actors via Reference

31. Actor References Have Transparent Locations

32. Actors all have a unique address
• Globally unique addresses:
• HTTP URLs
• Email addresses
• Phone numbers
• Messages are sent to an address,
not an actor
• Decouples sender and receiver

33. Actor address in Akka.NET

34. Akka.Remote & Akka.Cluster: Location
Doesn't Matter

35. Petabridge