welcome

Thank you for purchasing the MEAP for the second edition of Akka in Action.

This book is aimed primarily at two audiences. For those of you who find the Actor Model topic attractive, but have no specific knowledge. In this edition, you'll find a simple introduction to Akka, the most commonly used implementation of the Actor Model. Conversely, as a consultant for Lightbend, I’ve seen experienced clients encounter common difficulties, often due to a lack of knowledge of some key tools. Whether you're new to this or have some experience, you'll find the basics and the most important tools here.

To get the most out of this book, you need basic knowledge of Git to follow the exercises, experience with some testing frameworks like Junit or Scalatest, and some experience as a Java or Scala developer. The examples are written in Scala, but even if you are not familiar with Scala, the similarity to Java is enough to understand how the code works and what concepts are important. Some knowledge of Docker and Kubernetes is beneficial for some advanced examples. However, they are not absolutely necessary.

After reading this book and understanding the examples, you can consider yourself a productive professional. There are probably more concepts and tools you'll want to learn, but the ones taught here are enough to contribute to a professional project. You'll understand how an entire application works and how the code you write can be deployed in production.