Tutorials

The easiest way to learn the library is to try it out. There’s no substitute for experimentation in a live image!

The code snippets in these pages cannot be as interactive as the real thing. It can be difficult to get a feel for the system without hands-on experience. Install the system to try it out.

If you prefer to load the completed tutorial classes, rather than building them yourself while following along with each tutorial, you can load the ActorExamples package from SqueakSource:
(Installer squeaksource project: 'Actors') install: 'ActorExamples'

Examples and demos

Besides the tutorial examples below, the library includes a handful of demos and larger examples in the Actors-Demos package.

Tutorials

Basics

The Counter tutorial goes over the basics, with a simple stateful actor.

The Ping-pong tutorial introduces more complex multi-party interaction.

Scheduling and inter-actor continuations

The Barrier tutorial introduces techniques for managing an Actor’s incoming requests. These techniques allow suspension of active requests and replying to requests in a different order than they were received in.

Plain Old Smalltalk Objects

The Collections-as-behavior tutorial covers use of existing Smalltalk objects as Actor behaviors, discussing the benefits, drawbacks and pitfalls of the idea.

Client and Server TCP/IP Sockets

The TCP/IP Echo Server tutorial covers programming with Actors representing TCP/IP connection sockets and listening TCP/IP server sockets.