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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Concurrency Frameworks
  5. Akka vs Highland.js

Akka vs Highland.js

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Akka
Akka
Stacks1.2K
Followers1.0K
Votes88
Highland.js
Highland.js
Stacks0
Followers2
Votes0
GitHub Stars3.4K
Forks147

Akka vs Highland.js: What are the differences?

Introduction

When comparing Akka and Highland.js, it is important to understand key differences between these two frameworks commonly used for building scalable and reactive applications.

  1. Concurrency Model: one of the main differences between Akka and Highland.js is in their approach to concurrency. Akka is based on the Actor Model, where each actor is an independent entity that communicates asynchronously via message passing. On the other hand, Highland.js is a library that provides utilities for managing asynchronous operations in a more functional programming style, without relying on actors.

  2. Language Compatibility: Akka is primarily designed for use with the JVM languages like Java and Scala, making it a more suitable choice for projects that are based on these languages. In contrast, Highland.js is a JavaScript library, making it more compatible with Node.js applications and other JavaScript-based environments.

  3. Fault Tolerance: Akka provides built-in support for supervisor hierarchies, allowing for the automatic restart of failed actors and the isolation of failures. This makes it a popular choice for building fault-tolerant systems. Highland.js, on the other hand, does not have built-in mechanisms for handling faults and failures, requiring developers to implement their own error handling strategies.

  4. Stream Processing: Highland.js is specifically designed for stream processing, providing a set of high-level abstractions for working with streams of data in a functional style. In comparison, Akka also supports stream processing through the Akka Streams module but is more focused on actor-based concurrency.

  5. Community and Ecosystem: Akka has a larger and more established community, with extensive documentation, support, and a wide range of plugins and integrations available. Highland.js, being a JavaScript library, benefits from the vibrant Node.js ecosystem but may have a more limited community compared to Akka.

  6. Performance Considerations: Akka is optimized for high-performance and scalability, leveraging the actor model and reactive programming principles. Highland.js, while efficient in handling asynchronous operations, may not offer the same level of performance optimizations as Akka in certain contexts.

In Summary, Akka and Highland.js differ in their concurrency model, language compatibility, fault tolerance mechanisms, focus on stream processing, community support, and performance considerations.

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Detailed Comparison

Akka
Akka
Highland.js
Highland.js

Akka is a toolkit and runtime for building highly concurrent, distributed, and resilient message-driven applications on the JVM.

It manages synchronous and asynchronous code easily, using nothing more than standard JavaScript and Node-like Streams. You may be familiar with Promises, EventEmitters and callbacks, but moving between them is far from seamless.

-
Intended to work with node.js(or browserify) environment which is really nice; No alien concepts(from JavaScript/Node perspective); Back-pressure; The implementation is on top of Node streams which is really great idea; Small footprint
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
3.4K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
147
Stacks
1.2K
Stacks
0
Followers
1.0K
Followers
2
Votes
88
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 32
    Great concurrency model
  • 17
    Fast
  • 12
    Actor Library
  • 10
    Open source
  • 7
    Resilient
Cons
  • 3
    Mixing futures with Akka tell is difficult
  • 2
    Closing of futures
  • 2
    No type safety
  • 1
    Very difficult to refactor
  • 1
    Typed actors still not stable
No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available
Node.js
Node.js
JavaScript
JavaScript
WatermelonDB
WatermelonDB
Proppy
Proppy
Cycle.js
Cycle.js

What are some alternatives to Akka, Highland.js?

Underscore

Underscore

A JavaScript library that provides a whole mess of useful functional programming helpers without extending any built-in objects.

Deno

Deno

It is a secure runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript built with V8, Rust, and Tokio.

Orleans

Orleans

Orleans is a framework that provides a straightforward approach to building distributed high-scale computing applications, without the need to learn and apply complex concurrency or other scaling patterns. It was created by Microsoft Research and designed for use in the cloud.

Chart.js

Chart.js

Visualize your data in 6 different ways. Each of them animated, with a load of customisation options and interactivity extensions.

RxJS

RxJS

RxJS is a library for reactive programming using Observables, to make it easier to compose asynchronous or callback-based code. This project is a rewrite of Reactive-Extensions/RxJS with better performance, better modularity, better debuggable call stacks, while staying mostly backwards compatible, with some breaking changes that reduce the API surface.

Immutable.js

Immutable.js

Immutable provides Persistent Immutable List, Stack, Map, OrderedMap, Set, OrderedSet and Record. They are highly efficient on modern JavaScript VMs by using structural sharing via hash maps tries and vector tries as popularized by Clojure and Scala, minimizing the need to copy or cache data.

Netty

Netty

Netty is a NIO client server framework which enables quick and easy development of network applications such as protocol servers and clients. It greatly simplifies and streamlines network programming such as TCP and UDP socket server.

Finagle

Finagle

Finagle is an extensible RPC system for the JVM, used to construct high-concurrency servers. Finagle implements uniform client and server APIs for several protocols, and is designed for high performance and concurrency.

Lodash

Lodash

A JavaScript utility library delivering consistency, modularity, performance, & extras. It provides utility functions for common programming tasks using the functional programming paradigm.

Ramda

Ramda

It emphasizes a purer functional style. Immutability and side-effect free functions are at the heart of its design philosophy. This can help you get the job done with simple, elegant code.

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