Similarities and Differences between Otavia and Akka/Pekko

[yankun1992]

This is a high-frequency question, so I'll offer some summaries here:

1. Otavia currently is only support Scala 3, and it apply many new features of Scala 3. But Akka/Pekko support all Scala version enven support java!
2. Otavia is lighter and has zero dependencies on core modules.
3. Thanks to the new features of Scala 3, otavia is more type-safe.
4. Otavia implements a thread pool specifically for scheduling Actors. Instead of using the thread pool provided by the JDK, the thread model is simpler and more suitable for scheduling Actors.
5. The implementation of Akka's IO model is not as efficient as Netty (you can see at techempower that the performance of akka-http is much lower than Vert.x, which is based on Netty), and Otavia's IO model is ported from Netty in the hope that the IO performance will be close to Vert.x.
6. Otavia wants to make writing actor programs as natural and simple as normal synchronous blocking programs, full-link asynchronous, but without the callback hell.
7. With Otavia you can easily write a web application that accesses a database, redis or other components.

[micseydel]

• Could you provide examples of (3)? Is it more type-safe than Akka 2.6's typed actors?
• Could you elaborate on (4) "more suitable for scheduling Actors"?
• I'd like to see examples of (6), especially as compared to Akka
• It seems like the main selling point is better I/O, is that right?

[yankun1992]

Hi @micseydel. Thank you for your interest in this project.

Could you provide examples of (3)? Is it more type-safe than Akka 2.6's typed actors?

You can find Simple Ping-Pong Actors and Receive multiple message types examples at Quick Start.

Otavia is type-safe not only for incoming messages, but also for replies. You can see Message model at Core Concepts and Design.

And more examples can be find at otavia-projects/otavia-examples and a completed http server app at otavia-projects/techempower.

Could you elaborate on (4) "more suitable for scheduling Actors"?

Because scheduling is part of the runtime and transparent to developers, this part of the documentation is not yet planned. However, a brief introduction is that otavia's runtime has a fixed number of threads and uses CAS lock-free techniques for scheduling actors.

I'd like to see examples of (6), especially as compared to Akka

See otavia-projects/otavia-examples and a completed http server app at otavia-projects/techempower.

It seems like the main selling point is better I/O, is that right?

Not only better I/O, but also better message model, more efficient thread model, and more! You can find the key point at Core Concepts and Design.

[micseydel]

Thanks. I'm sticking with Akka for now (Pekko wasn't ready when I started my project) but I'll be curious where this goes as it matures. I certainly don't plan on sticking to Akka 2.6 forever but it's suiting my needs for now.

[yankun1992]

AKKA/Pekko is a great project and is still the best choice for production environments. Otavia is still in the early stages and I'm accelerating development efforts. And more developers are warmly welcome to contribute!