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The concept of a message is older than the actor model, so I don't think it can be considered a fundamental part of the definition of a message (so Smalltalk-st
by cout 5y ago
The concept of a message is older than the actor model, so I don't think it can be considered a fundamental part of the definition of a message (so Smalltalk-style messages are still messages). I do think the Actor model is the most ideal form of message-passing in a single-process system, and seems to be the direction many languages are heading toward as they evolve.
- throwaway894345 5y agoTo be clear, I’m saying “something like the actor model”, not the actor model specifically, though I assume the actor model also satisfies even the narrower definitions of message passing.
- Rochus 5y ago> The concept of a message is older than the actor model Publications by Hewitt or Sussman in the seventies even suggest that the concept traces back to lambda calculus. > so Smalltalk-style messages are still messages Only Smalltalk-72 had true "message passing" (i.e. arbitrary tokens sent to an object for interpretation); Smalltalk-76 onwards uses a virtual methods implementation similar to the one of Simula 67 or C++ instead.
- ProfHewitt 5y agoThe tokens in Smalltalk-72 were not "messages" to Actors where whole messages are Actors. Since Actors are universal primitives of digital computation, it is possible to reframe all previous work as using messages, including Turing Machines and the lambda calculus. Lambda calculus was originally defined using string substitution. Both lambda calculus and Turing machines are computationally less powerful than Actors.
- aliasEli 5y ago> Both lambda calculus and Turing machines are computationally less powerful than Actors. Do you have a reference for that?
- ProfHewitt 5y agoSee the following article: https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3603021 https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3603021