Lightweight processes in Scala

[Nick Linker]

Hi all,

Martin Odersky and Philipp Haller did some effort and implemented 
Erlang-like lightweight processes over JVM using Scala language. Their 
lightweight "actors" look like this:

class Counter extends Actor {
    override def run(): unit = loop(0)
   
    def loop(value: int): unit = {
        Console.println("Value: " + value)
        receive {
            case Incr() => loop(value + 1)
            case Value(a) => a ! value; loop(value)
            case Lock(a) => a ! value
                            receive { case UnLock(v) => loop(v) }
            case _ => loop(value)
        }
    }
}

The article can be found at 
http://lampwww.epfl.ch/~odersky/papers/jmlc06.html.
Scala language homepage is http://scala.epfl.ch/.

Maybe I have overactive imagination, but I'm afraid, it could be serious 
threat for Erlang from Java side because one of the most significant 
advantages of Erlang over JVM were lightweight processes and now JVM 
will have them.

With best regards,
Nick.