> Is it just me, or are these two seemingly unrelated schools of computing converging on the exact same idea? You send messages to some target (ie, the file descriptor).
Seems to me that it's a matter of perspective, specifically about who you're sending messages to.
You can consider the message as being sent to the file (descriptor).
You can also consider it a message sent to the kernel, in which case the kernel is an actor and the file is a passive data abstraction.
Both are accurate and useful; which one makes more sense will depend on context and your own background.
I do think there's something to be said for files being seen not as things that can be "owned" and "manipulated" and "locked" by a main process, but rather as their own independent services, in a unified registry, who can only return results asynchronously, and only over an external API - a la the Amazon Memo (https://chrislaing.net/blog/the-memo/). Whether there's an API broker (in this case, the kernel) is just an implementation detail of the "network" layer.
Seems to me that it's a matter of perspective, specifically about who you're sending messages to.
You can consider the message as being sent to the file (descriptor).
You can also consider it a message sent to the kernel, in which case the kernel is an actor and the file is a passive data abstraction.
Both are accurate and useful; which one makes more sense will depend on context and your own background.