Carleton University
Technical Report TR-25
June 1983
Actors – The Stage is Set
John R. Pugh
Abstract
Proposed new software systems are always, larger and more complex than their predecessors. At the same time, the programmer, and designers of these systems are put under pressure to increase their productivity, keep escalating software costs in check, and produce systems which are more reliable and easy to maintain. Currently, most of this software is developed using high-level languages, based on the traditional procedure-data model of computation. This paper describes an alternative which may prove to be a more appropriate model for the design of large, complex software systems. It is based on the view that software systems should be constructed as communities, of active experts or “Actors”, each of whom has {1} it’s own knowledge base (2) the ability to perform certain prescribed tasks.. and {3} is able to communicate with other Actors by message-passing…