Revisiting Actor Programming in C++ (2015) (opens in new tab)

Their definitions are distinct -- and at least at a surface level, quite different.[1] They have different abstract interfaces. From a practical point of view, if you're going to use them for programming, it's safe to say that they're not "the same." However, you do see some overlap in practical implementations: for example some actor systems have first-class channel or mailbox abstractions, whereas the pure Actor model has no such entities. People talk about implementing actors in Go, but Go is a CSP-based system.

You can ask whether the models are somehow equivalent (isomorphic?), or to what degree can you express one model in the other. Last time I checked, that is a fairly deep rabbit hole -- you'd need a solid grasp of the theory of equivalence of concurrent programs (e.g. pi-calculus) to answer the question properly.

Also don't forget that the Erlang team claim to have never heard of Hewitt's actor model, so Erlang-inspired actor systems are potentially distinct from (Hewitt, Agha et. al.) Actor Model systems.

[1] https://arild.github.io/csp-presentation/#1

JIF: there is more than just CAF in C++ land [1]

There are at least QP/C++ [2] and SObjectizer [3].

All three frameworks are used in production, especially QP/C++.

Error handling in C++ actor frameworks is a different topic than such handling in Erlang or other safe language. Because if you do something like division by 0 or deference of null pointer in your C++ actor you will have a different result: in the best case the whole your application will crush, not just one actor.

[1] https://www.slideshare.net/YauheniAkhotnikau/actor-model-and... [2] https://www.state-machine.com/qpcpp/ [3] https://stiffstream.com/en/products/sobjectizer.html