The actor model is a model for concurrent computation originally developed in 1973. This classic definition says that in response to a message, an actor may:
- Make local decisions
- Create more actors
- Send messages
- Determine how to respond to the next message
There are dozens of actor model implementations out there, from Akka to wasmCloud. One aspect of the model implementation differentiates wasmCloud from the majority. In this post, we’ll take a look at the notion of actors creating more actors and see why people have historically wanted this ability in their frameworks and how wasmCloud accomplishes the same goals but without manual supervision tree management.