> A lot of Akka code just ends up being maintaining these large dictionaries keeping track of all the unfinished stuff I eventually need to send various actors

> A lot of Akka code just ends up being maintaining these large dictionaries keeping track of all the unfinished stuff I eventually need to send various actors when I finally receive all the ingredients. I don't think this is an Akka-specific thing. I work with NServiceBus, which implements long running processes using database-persisted sagas (sort of state machines), and we have exactly the same situation... NServiceBus even makes these big state-tracking dictionaries explicit (every saga has a corresponding "saga data" object).