Hello world in Akka

For writing our first Akka actor, we need to add the akka-actor library dependency. For dependency management we'll be using SBT and, as we know, we'll be defining these library dependencies in our build.sbt file. To do this, we need to have SBT installed on our system.

Setting up the environment

To get started with a simple Akka project, we can simply follow these steps:

1. Go to Lightbend's TECH HUB (https://developer.lightbend.com) and click on START A PROJECT:

2. Search for Akka Quickstart Scala under Akka projects:

3. Click on CREATE A PROJECT FOR ME!:

4. Extract the downloaded ZIP (compressed) file.

We can open the extracted folder in IntelliJ IDEA IDE:

1. Open IntelliJ IDE.
2. Click on File | New | Project from Existing Sources...:

3. Choose the build.sbt from the project (akka-quickstart-scala) we've just extracted:

4. And you get the project open in the IntelliJ window:

This is one way of starting with an Akka project. This project has already defined all the akka-actors specific dependencies...