The basic programming model of languages, like Java, is thread based and while multithreaded applications aren’t terribly hard to write, there are challenges to writing them correctly. What’s difficult about concurrent programming is thinking in terms of concurrency with threads. Alternate concurrency models have arisen along these lines — one that is particularly interesting, and gaining mindshare in the Java community, is the actor model.
The actor model facilitates concurrent programming by allowing a safer mechanism for message-passing between processes (or actors). Implementations of this model vary between languages and frameworks. Luckily, there are a number of choices for leveraging this model on the Java platform.
The latest article in IBM DeveloperWorks’ series Java Development 2.0 entitled “Introducing Kilim“, introduces Kilim, an actor-based message-passing framework that weaves together concurrent and distributed programming.
If you want to leverage “plain Jane” Java actors, then your best bet might be Kilim or a similar framework — as you’ll find, an actor-based framework does make concurrency programming, and leveraging multicore processes, much easier.
To find out more regarding Kilim and the actor model, read the article and while you’re at it, check out the other articles in this series that explore the spectrum of technologies and tools that make Java development these days quite exciting!
