CLA-A Summit 2018 Presentation: Actors - Losing the Ease of DataFlow Programming

[Dmitry]

I gave this 7x7 presentation at the Americas CLA Summit 2018 in Austin. Slide stack can be found on NI Certified LabVIEW Architects Community Forum (access limited to CLAs).  I am uploading it here for the rest of you, interested in learning about advanced Actor Programming concepts.

Abstract

Actors are Message Driven Entities. NI Actor Framework Best Practices discourage using Blocking Reply Messages as a leading reason for application deadlocks. As a result, Actor Programming is being reduced to implementing low-level Sequence Diagrams - losing lion’s share of the ease of Structured Data Flow Programming so dear to our hearts. Presentation discusses an important (and safe) use case for Blocking Reply Messages that allows bringing Data Flow back into our Actors.

The PowerPoint 2016 file has animations and is best viewed in Slide Show mode.

PDF file includes slide notes. To see notes either hover over an icon in the top left corner of a page (containing Notes) or right-click the icon and select “Open All Pop-ups” option.  Diagrams & images on slides with animations are stacked and may obscure images farther out along Z axis.

Notes are essential for better understanding this presentation.

Enjoy,

Dmitry

[drjdpowell]

I like it, Dmitry.  Using blocking Request-Reply was one of the points I was trying to make in my "What Would a SubVI Do?" talk.

[Dmitry]

Thanks James 🙂 I've missed that thread. Need to read it now ... It appears we think very much alike when it comes to actors ...

BTW, I am sitting in Gatwick right now - waiting for a connection to Milan 🙂