Actors: Evolution and Implementation

This lecture explores the history and development of Actors, from their invention in 1973 for artificial intelligence research to their commercial use in telecommunications. It delves into the challenges of modern CPUs with multiple cores and the necessity of parallel programming. Through examples like a Bank Account class, the instructor illustrates the risks of parallel execution and the importance of synchronization. The lecture also introduces tools like locks and semaphores in Scala for managing shared state and preventing data corruption.