scala - What do Futures and Agents in Akka offer over Clojure's counterparts? -

having watched presentation composable futures akka 2.0, curious know additional features akka implementation of futures , agents bring on clojure's ones.

"agents in akka inspired agents in clojure." first line in agent documentation on akka , clears agents part of question. far futures concerned, both same conceptually (i.e invoking operation on separate thread). underlying implementation based on java.util.concurrent, both using same underlying infrastructure.

scala part: important part how composable word come play (both agents , futures). if go akka docs find can use higher-order functions map, filter etc. on akka futures, i.e. map operation on future returns future (and filter). allows compose/chain futures , wait on final future final value. now, possible because map, filter, for comprehension etc. based on scala (monadic) api allows new type provide specific implementations of these functions.

clojure part: on clojure side of things, know map, filter etc normal functions work on collections, i.e work on can traversed , hence different concept monadic api of scala. in clojure use different ways compose futures after clojure (or lisp in general) allow composability in many many ways