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Erlang isn't CSP, it's the Actor model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model

CSP is what inspired the golang channels, via occam and some other languages. The whole synchronization on unbuffered channels is the most obvious differentiator, though there are others like the actor concept of pattern matching over a mailbox.

The whole CSP vs actor debate is quite interesting when you get down to it because they superficially look kind of similar but are radically different in implications.



Watch the guy who came up with Erlang, the Actor model and CSP discuss it: https://youtu.be/37wFVVVZlVU One of my favorite videos on youtube.


Totally! I love the Alan Kay and Armstrong one too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhOHn9TClXY


There are a lot of languages that now claim to be 'Actor Model' and have only a shade on Erlang's fault tolerance and load balancing. That term no longer has the gravitas it once had.


The actor model in general doesn't really care about fault tolerance in the way that erlang does.


And this would be part of that “minimized as being nice that I felt was essential” thing I mentioned in my original comment.


sure i would argue that Erlang isn't really actor model, because the error handling was the first priority and that is what drove them to build processes with message passing as the primitive -- so it just happened to look like actor model.




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