Pykka - Actors For Python
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Pykka - Actors For Python
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Re: Pykka - Actors For Python
#2How is it different from xmlrpclib?
http://docs.python.org/library/xmlrpclib.html#example-of-cli...
Re: Pykka - Actors For Python
#3How is it different from xmlrpclib? http://docs.python.org/library/xmlrpclib.html#example-of-cli...
They're not even comparable. xmlrpclib is a library for remote procedure call. Pykka provides an implementation of the Actor model, which is a model of concurrent computation.
Re: Pykka - Actors For Python
#4How is it different from xmlrpclib? http://docs.python.org/library/xmlrpclib.html#example-of-cli...
I'm not that familiar with xmlrpclib, but as far as I know from a quick look xmlrpclib lets two programs, possibly running on different computers, communicate over HTTP.
Pykka helps multiple threads (or eventlets if using pykka.gevent) in a single program to communicate in a safe and easy matter without requiring the developer to manage locks and whatnot that he would have if he used plain threads. Under the hood Pykka is just an abstraction on top of threads and queues.
It's not uncommon for actor frameworks, like Akka, to support communication between actors on different computers, but there is currently no support for remote actors in Pykka.
Re: Pykka - Actors For Python
#5How is it different from xmlrpclib? http://docs.python.org/library/xmlrpclib.html#example-of-cli...
They're not even comparable. xmlrpclib is a library for remote procedure call. Pykka provides an implementation of the Actor model, which is a model of concurrent computation.
WikiPedia defines 3 basic things that make up actors:
* send a finite number of messages to other actors; * create a finite number of new actors; * designate the behavior to be used for the next message receives.
Now, I'm not saying that xmlrpclib and actors are the same, but one could implement a system that has these properties using xmlrpclib as the basis of transport, and to "designate the behavior to be used for the next message receieves." The way you'd designate is the message you sent, is the handler that gets run.
And, if you want to get even more actor like, run xmlrpc servers in their own threads.
But, yeah, a real actor system would probably never do this.
Re: Pykka - Actors For Python
#6The name made me hope that it would let you communicate from python with akka actors. Apparently not.
Re: Pykka - Actors For Python
#7Won't the GIL really limit the performance of this?
Re: Pykka - Actors For Python
#8Actor model concurrency is way more fun and easy to use than handling threads on your own. It's really nice to see this coming to Python. Let's just hope that this project doesn't get neglected like the one for Ruby.
Re: Pykka - Actors For Python
#9Won't the GIL really limit the performance of this?
sweet, I was wondering when someone was going to mention the GIL, now the fun can start.
http://dabeaz.blogspot.com/2012/03/pycon-2012-followup.html
"In any case, the performance of threads is highly specific to the application at hand. You can't just take some benchmark from one of my GIL talks and extrapolate that out to a general statement about all Python thread programming. Personally, I find that Python threads have worked pretty well for most of the problems where I've used them. Of course your mileage might vary."
So.... maybe, it depends on what you are doing.
Personally I would have been happy to see ProcessingActor in pykka, maybe with 0mq for the ipc. That would be cool, but this looks useful nonetheless.
Re: Pykka - Actors For Python
#10The fun thing is that Pykka works with Gevent. Now, if only it did networking too...