Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
Akka vs Spring: What are the differences?
Introduction
In this Markdown code, we will explore the key differences between Akka and Spring. Akka is a toolkit and runtime for building highly concurrent, distributed, and fault-tolerant applications while Spring is a framework that simplifies the development of Java applications.
Concurrency Model: Akka uses an Actor model for concurrency, where communication between components is asynchronous and message-based. It provides lightweight, isolated actors that communicate through message passing, allowing for better scalability and fault tolerance. On the other hand, Spring uses a thread-based concurrency model, where threads are used to handle requests and execute tasks. This model may scale less efficiently and have more overhead compared to the actor model used in Akka.
Distribution and Fault Tolerance: Akka is designed for distributed systems and provides built-in support for clustering and replication. It allows for transparent distribution of actors across multiple nodes, making it easy to build fault-tolerant systems. Spring, on the other hand, does not have built-in support for distribution and fault tolerance. It relies on other technologies like message brokers or cloud platforms for achieving these capabilities.
Asynchronous communication: Akka encourages asynchronous communication between components, which allows for non-blocking and highly concurrent systems. It provides powerful abstractions like futures and streams for handling asynchronous operations. Spring also supports asynchronous communication, but it relies on traditional approaches like threading or Java's CompletableFuture, which may not be as efficient or scalable as Akka's actor-based model.
Reactive Programming: Akka is designed with reactive principles in mind and provides excellent support for building reactive systems. It allows for better responsiveness, scalability, and resilience in the face of failures. Spring has also embraced reactive programming with the introduction of Spring WebFlux, but it may not have the same level of support and integration for reactive systems as Akka.
Integration: Spring is a full-fledged framework that provides a wide range of features and integrations with other technologies. It has excellent support for database access, dependency injection, web development, and other enterprise features. Akka, on the other hand, focuses more on the interaction between actors and provides less out-of-the-box support for other technologies. It can be used alongside Spring for specific use cases, but it may require more effort to integrate the two frameworks.
Community and Ecosystem: Spring has a large and mature community with extensive documentation, tutorials, and third-party libraries. It is widely adopted in the industry and has a vibrant ecosystem. Akka has a smaller community compared to Spring and may not have the same level of documentation and third-party library support. However, it is still widely used in specific domains like distributed systems and has an active community.
In summary, Akka and Spring differ in their concurrency models, distribution and fault tolerance capabilities, asynchronous communication approach, support for reactive programming, level of integration with other technologies, and the size of their communities and ecosystems. Depending on the requirements of the application, developers can choose between Akka's actor model for highly concurrent and distributed systems or Spring's comprehensive framework for building enterprise applications.
I am a graduate student working as a software engineer in a company. For my personal development, I want to learn web development. I have some experience in Springboot while I was in university. So I want to continue with spring-boot, but I heard about Django. I'm reaching out to the experts here to help me choose a future proof framework. Django or Spring Boot?
Thanks in Advance
Kamrul Hasan, Don't choose dying technologies with small communities. How many startups do you think use Spring and Django? Use Google Trends to compare technologies. Study the StackOverflow developer survey and job websites to see what technologies are wanted. Few teams can afford to train you to get up to their level so be a life-long learner. Embrace the dawn of a new industry and become an expert.
I recommend you stick to Java Spring as you already have experience with the technology, i suggest you master this technology and then if Django seam to be very interesting to you, django is a framework you can easily pickup as python is also easy, you have to probably be able to manage the context switching between a static typed language like Java to dynamic language like python
It depends on what you want. Spring is Java-based whereas Django is Python-based. The question rather is Java vs Python. I personally recommend Python as it's shorter and easy to learn. But Java has advantages in really big systems.
Hi Kamrul,
It really depends on the kind of project and whether you feel more comfortable with Java or Python. Both are excellent frameworks, with a huge community and learning material. I've been working with Spring Boot since I started coding almost and I can assure you it's the perfect combination for Java. The learning curve may be harder that Django, but once you know the basics you're good to go. I can't tell you much about Django but you must now by now that it has a great reputation with Python users. In any case I don't think you can go wrong with any of these two. My advice is, if you are already familiar with the Spring framework, give Spring Boot a try, because you're going to find out that it just makes the whole Spring experience so much easier. Let us know what you chose!
Both are in active development and had huge community support. It really depends on you what you are comfortable with. Both are married to their respective languages. I choose Python over Java because of its simplicity and readability. To develop in java you need to write a lot of code. That's how java is. The best part I love with Django is its synchronization with Databases.
Pros of Akka
- Great concurrency model32
- Fast17
- Actor Library12
- Open source10
- Resilient7
- Message driven5
- Scalable5
Pros of Spring
- Java230
- Open source157
- Great community136
- Very powerful123
- Enterprise114
- Lot of great subprojects64
- Easy setup60
- Convention , configuration, done44
- Standard40
- Love the logic31
- Good documentation13
- Dependency injection11
- Stability11
- MVC9
- Easy6
- Makes the hard stuff fun & the easy stuff automatic3
- Strong typing3
- Code maintenance2
- Best practices2
- Maven2
- Great Desgin2
- Easy Integration with Spring Security2
- Integrations with most other Java frameworks2
- Java has more support and more libraries1
- Supports vast databases1
- Large ecosystem with seamless integration1
- OracleDb integration1
- Live project1
Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions
Cons of Akka
- Mixing futures with Akka tell is difficult3
- Closing of futures2
- No type safety2
- Very difficult to refactor1
- Typed actors still not stable1
Cons of Spring
- Draws you into its own ecosystem and bloat15
- Verbose configuration3
- Poor documentation3
- Java3
- Java is more verbose language in compare to python2