title: Basic Explanation of Actors in Erlang
body: <p>I am trying to put together a very basic explanation of actors in Erlang. It is supposed to be as bare-bones as possible, but without leaving out key features of the theory or the Erlang implementation of it. This is my explanation:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>The actor model is a mathematical model of concurrent computation that treats <em>actors</em> as the universal primitives of concurrent computation. The actor is a <em>computational entity</em> that, in response to a message it receives, can concurrently (1) send a finite number of messages to other actors, (2)  create a finite number of new actors, and (3) designate the behavior to be used for the next message it receives.</p>
    
    <p>In Erlang, each actor is a separate process in the virtual machine, implemented by a function. Processes communicate by sending messages to each other. Every message is explicit, traceable and safe. The messages are received in a mailbox and stored in the order in which they are received. They are stored there until the receiving process takes them out to be read. This is called asynchronous message passing.</p>
    
    <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/KxIVt.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/KxIVt.png" alt="Blockquote"></a></p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>What do you guys think? Is it OK? Should I add or change anything? Thanks.</p>