Actor Model

I'm looking at the actor model and it seems interesting, but a little problematic because it's too recursive.

I like this; an actor has 3 properties

• Storage
• Processing
• Communication

but I don't like the Communication model. Instead, a sort of Object with handlers seems good. But then there's the problem of what is communicated. I like the idea of messages being separate entities. So a message is storage and processing, but no communication. However, following the Rust model, when you send a message, you lose access to it, it is not shared.

One model has it that after sending a message, you can send any number of responses. I'm not sure I like this. Even the concept of a response gets complicated.

Another issue is that communication is complicated and this covers it up. There needs to be a way for any message to send itself over any channel.

• passing reference in same program
• socket
• file
• internet

Questions

• How does an actor stop?