10 Best Akka Courses and Certifications Online

Akka is a powerful toolkit and runtime for building concurrent, distributed, and fault-tolerant systems on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). As the demand for scalable and resilient software solutions continues to grow, more and more developers are seeking to master the intricacies of Akka. To meet this demand, there are various online courses available that aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of Akka’s features and capabilities. In this article, we will explore some of the best Akka courses available online and review their key features and benefits.

Here’s a look at the Best Akka Courses and Certifications Online and what they have to offer for you!

10 Best Akka Courses and Certifications Online

1. Akka Essentials with Scala | Rock the JVM by Daniel Ciocîrlan (Udemy) (Our Best Pick)

The Akka Essentials with Scala course offered by Rock the JVM aims to teach the Akka actor model using Scala, with a focus on writing parallel, concurrent, and fault-tolerant systems. The course is designed for Scala programmers looking to design complex and scalable concurrent applications, and those who want to enhance their marketable skills. The course promises to deconstruct all concepts into critical pieces, select the most important ideas, and sequence them in a way that makes sense throughout the learning process. The course also offers a new mental model around parallel applications and helps in developing a significantly more marketable resume.

The course is not for beginners in Scala or those who have never worked with threads. To benefit from the course, students must have experience with functional programming at the level of the Rock the JVM Scala beginners course, and a solid understanding of general programming fundamentals. The lectures cover both theory and practice, with code examples, real-life code demos, assignments, resources, exercises, and solutions. The course aims to guide the students, but not tell them what to do, and allows freedom to experiment and improve upon their code.

The course consists of six sections, starting with a welcome section, followed by the Scala and Parallel Programming Recap, Akka Actors, Testing Akka Actors, Fault Tolerance, Akka Infrastructure, and Akka Patterns. Students are expected to write over 2000 lines of Akka code themselves, with guidance, and become a rockstar. The end result would be a fun and enjoyable learning experience, leading to more marketable skills, a new mental model, and thousands of lines of Akka code.

2. Akka Streams with Scala | Rock the JVM by Daniel Ciocîrlan (Udemy)

The “Akka Streams with Scala | Rock the JVM” course, taught by Daniel Ciocîrlan, is designed for Scala/Akka programmers who need to develop reactive distributed applications on a large scale. The course covers Akka Streams, a powerful tool in speeding up the development of concurrent applications, by breaking down all concepts into simple but critical and powerful pieces. The course is comprehensive, with lectures, code examples, assignments, and additional resources.

The end benefits of the course include a new mental model around streaming and reactive systems, a more marketable resume, and an enjoyable work experience. The prerequisites for the course include experience with Scala and Akka at the level of the Rock the JVM courses. The course is not suitable for those who have never written Scala code or worked with Akka. The course includes exercises that encourage experimentation and improvement of code. The course covers Introduction, Akka Streams Primer, Akka Streams Graphs, Akka Streams Techniques and Patterns, Advanced Akka Streams, and Epilogue.

3. Akka HTTP with Scala | Rock the JVM by Daniel Ciocîrlan (Udemy)

The Akka HTTP with Scala | Rock the JVM course is designed to teach Scala and Akka developers how to write reactive microservices and REST APIs with Akka HTTP and Scala. The course is aimed at Scala/Akka programmers who need to design large-scale reactive HTTP backends and microservices. The demand for Akka has grown exponentially, making it a highly marketable skill. The course deconstructs all concepts into critical pieces and is taught in a way that “clicks” and makes sense throughout the learning process.

The course is comprehensive and assumes a solid understanding of general programming fundamentals. It is not suitable for those who have never written Scala code before or have never worked with Akka. The course covers topics such as Akka HTTP Low-Level Server API, Akka HTTP High-Level Server API, and Akka HTTP Client API.

The course is structured in a way that offers guidance but also allows for freedom to experiment and improve upon code. Both theory and practice are important, and the course includes lectures with code examples, real-life code demos and assignments, as well as additional resources, instructions, exercises, and solutions. The end benefits include a new mental model around stream-based microservices, a more marketable resume, and more enjoyable work.

Overall, the Akka HTTP with Scala | Rock the JVM course is for established programmers with experience with Scala and Akka at the level of the Rock the JVM courses. The course is taught in a way that gets straight to the point and is designed to help developers become a badass programmer.

4. Akka Persistence with Scala | Rock the JVM by Daniel Ciocîrlan (Udemy)

The Akka Persistence with Scala | Rock the JVM course is designed for Scala/Akka developers who need to design critical and long-lived distributed applications using Event Sourcing and Akka Persistence. The course aims to help developers write long-term, fault-tolerant distributed applications and become proficient in writing complex Akka code. It is a highly marketable skill that can speed up the development of concurrent applications by as much as 10x.

The course is structured in a way that simplifies critical concepts and focuses on important ideas that can help the learner become an expert. The course covers everything from a completely new mental model around persistence to more marketable resumes and more enjoyable work.

This course assumes that the learner has experience with Scala and Akka at the level of the Rock the JVM courses. It is not for beginners who have never written Scala code before or never worked with Akka. The course is comprehensive, but it requires a good level of focus and commitment to become a successful programmer.

The course includes lectures with code examples, real-life code demos, and assignments, plus additional resources, instructions, exercises, and solutions. The course is designed to provide guidance to the learner, but not tell them what to do. The exercises give the learner the freedom to experiment and improve upon their code.

The course is divided into five sections, including Akka Persistence Primer, Akka Persistence Stores and Serialization, Advanced Akka Persistence Patterns and Practices, The Finish Line, and Welcome. By the end of the course, the learner should be able to design critical and long-lived distributed applications using Event Sourcing and Akka Persistence, and become proficient in writing complex Akka code.

5. Akka Remoting and Clustering with Scala | Rock the JVM by Daniel Ciocîrlan (Udemy)

The Akka Remoting and Clustering with Scala course offered by Rock the JVM is designed for Scala and Akka developers who want to learn how to write reactive distributed systems with remote actors, Akka clustering, and Scala. The course covers the powerful Akka Remoting and Clustering in detail, including remote actors and clusters, such as Cluster Singleton and Cluster Sharding. Participants will write 1500+ lines of Akka code under guidance to become experts in this topic.

The course is ideal for programmers who need to design high-performance, large-scale, reactive distributed systems. Akka is a highly in-demand skill that speeds up the development of concurrent applications by as much as 10x. The course content is presented in a manner that deconstructs all concepts into critical pieces and selects the most important ideas, separating them into what’s simple but critical and what’s powerful. Ideas are sequenced in a way that makes sense throughout the process of learning, and everything is applied through live code.

This course is not for beginners who have never written Scala code or worked with Akka. Participants should have experience with Scala and Akka at the level of the Rock the JVM courses. The course is comprehensive and assumes a solid understanding of general programming fundamentals, requiring a good level of focus and commitment.

The course includes lectures with code examples, real-life code demos, and assignments, as well as additional resources, instructions, exercises, and solutions. Exercises are designed to offer guidance, allowing freedom to experiment and improve upon code. The course aims to provide a completely new mental model around distributed systems, remote actors, and clustering, which ultimately leads to a more marketable resume and more enjoyable work.

The course has five sections, including Introduction, Akka Remoting, Akka Clustering, Advanced Akka Clustering, and Epilogue. The course Instructor, Daniel Ciocîrlan, is known for getting straight to the point, making it a comprehensive yet enjoyable learning experience.

6. Akka Serialization with Scala | Rock the JVM by Daniel Ciocîrlan (Udemy)

The Akka Serialization with Scala course offered by Rock the JVM is designed for Scala/Akka developers looking to improve the performance of their systems. The course covers the setup of serialization for Akka, including integration of Avro, Kryo, and Protobuf, as well as the option to write custom serializers. The default Java serializer is slow, memory-intensive, and poses security risks, making it crucial for serious Akka development teams to move away from it.

The course assumes a solid understanding of general programming fundamentals and requires experience with Scala and Akka at the level of the Rock the JVM courses. It is not suitable for individuals who have never written Scala code or worked with Akka. The course is comprehensive, and the instructor guides students through a range of lectures, code examples, real-life code demos, and assignments, with additional resources and exercises provided.

The course is designed to help students develop an enhanced knowledge of Akka with the integration of serializers, improve their resumes, and achieve optimal performance for their distributed and persistent systems. The instructor deconstructs all concepts into critical pieces and applies everything in live code. The end benefits of the course include a more marketable resume, improved knowledge of Akka with serialization integration, and optimal performance for distributed and persistent systems.

The course is broken down into three sections: Introduction, Serialization, and Epilogue. The instructor emphasizes the importance of both theory and practice and encourages students to have fun along the way. Successful students are those who are guided but not told what to do, as the instructor provides exercises with guidance and freedom to experiment and improve upon code.

7. Practical Reactive Streams with Akka and Java by Matt Greencroft, Virtual Pair Programmers (Udemy)

The Practical Reactive Streams with Akka and Java course is designed to teach developers how to build asynchronous, non-blocking reactive streams with back-pressure. The course instructors, Matt Greencroft and Virtual Pair Programmers, have a focus on providing a practical, hands-on learning experience. The course builds upon the previous “Practical Java concurrency with the Akka Actor Model” course, extending the knowledge of using the actor model with Akka and Java to create reactive streams.

Reactive Streams are critical in building real-world concurrent applications with the actor model. They offer a solution to build more complex processing scenarios and deal with varying data loads effectively. Furthermore, they provide the foundation for connecting applications to external systems, which is covered in the Akka Http course. For developers new to this technology, the course covers everything from scratch, making it easy to follow and understand.

The course is full of practical real-world scenarios, taking the blockchain mining application built in the previous course a few steps further to make it even more realistic. It is important to note that although Akka is built-in Scala, no Scala knowledge is necessary for this course. The course covers Akka with Java, and no Scala code is written. The course covers the newer Akka Typed API only.

The course content and sections are organized into 18 chapters, beginning with an introduction and concluding with an appendix. The chapters cover a range of topics, including creating the first stream, simple sources and sinks, simple flows, materialized values, stream lifecycles, logging, back pressure and graph performance, the GraphDSL, complex flow types, graphs with multiple sources and sinks, non-runnable or partial graphs, using actors in graphs, advanced backpressure, the java flow package, and a case study on blockchain mining.

8. Learning Path: Akka: Building Applications and Microservices by Packt Publishing (Udemy)

Packt Publishing’s Learning Path, “Akka: Building Applications and Microservices,” is a comprehensive video course that provides a step-by-step guide to using Akka for developing distributed, concurrent, fault-tolerant, and scalable applications. Akka, written in Scala, is a powerful tool that can be used to build systems that perform well on both local machines and remote networks. The course is authored by Salma Khater, a senior software engineer specializing in designing and engineering real-time applications and distributed systems based on Akka, and Tomasz Lelek, a software engineer and co-founder of initLearn.

The Learning Path is divided into two main sections: Learning Akka and Building Microservice with AKKA HTTP. The first section covers the basics of the Akka toolkit, including the actor system, hierarchical structures, and message routing. The course also covers creating stateful actors, working with a cluster system, and remote actors. In addition to these topics, the section covers advanced concepts such as building an actor that can change its behavior during runtime.

The second section of the course focuses on building Reactive microservices using Akka and Akka HTTP. The course covers the principles underlying the Reactive Manifesto, including Responsive, Resilient, Elastic, and Message-Driven concepts. The section provides a detailed guide on how to design microservices that adhere to these principles.

The goal of the course is to make learners proficient in building applications and microservices with Akka. The Learning Path is organized in a logical and stepwise manner, with each video building on the skills learned in the video before it. By the end of the course, learners will have a clear understanding of Akka and how to use it to build distributed systems.

Overall, Packt Publishing’s Learning Path, “Akka: Building Applications and Microservices,” provides a comprehensive guide to using Akka for building applications and microservices.

9. Practical Akka Http and Microservices by Matt Greencroft, Virtual Pair Programmers (Udemy)

The “Practical Akka Http and Microservices Course” is an online course that teaches students how to connect Akka systems to the outside world. This course is taught by Matt Greencroft and Virtual Pair Programmers, and is a practical, hands-on course for building robust and concurrent applications in Java.

The course builds upon previous courses in the series, “Practical Java concurrency with the Akka Actor Model” and “Practical Reactive Streams with Akka and Java.” Topics covered in the course include using the Akka Http libraries to build Akka servers and clients, utilizing REST to communicate between Akka systems, and implementing security, including HTTPS/SSL.

Students will also learn about marshalling and unmarshalling, advanced Routing DSL, building custom directives, connecting Akka into complex Reactive Stream graphs, effectively dealing with exceptions, and allowing a browser-based client to connect to an Akka system. The course is very practical, with real-world scenarios, and students will be expanding on the blockchain mining application built over the first two courses to create a genuine microservice.

Although Akka is built in Scala, no Scala knowledge is required for this course. The course covers Akka with Java and students will not be writing any Scala code. The course covers the newer Akka Typed API only.

The course is divided into 15 chapters, starting with an introduction and progressing through creating the first server, processing incoming connections, basic routing, and security and custom directives. The course also covers going deeper with routing, scaling up and backpressure, integrating routes and streams, rejections and exceptions, testing routes, and keeping the connection alive. Students will also create a client and complete a case study exercise.

In conclusion, the “Practical Akka Http and Microservices Course” is a comprehensive and practical course that teaches students how to connect Akka systems to the outside world.

10. Learning Path: Microservices with Java, Scala, and Akka by Packt Publishing (Udemy)

This Learning Path by Packt Publishing covers the topic of microservices for JVM languages. Microservices are a popular architectural method for application development and are being adopted by many organizations. This Learning Path is designed to help learners build smaller, lighter, and faster microservices.

The Learning Path is a series of individual video products put together in a logical and stepwise manner such that each video builds on the skills learned in the video before it. It begins with building microservices in Java and then moves on to building microservices in Scala. Best practices and useful implementation strategies in Scala are also addressed. Finally, it covers building reactive microservices using Akka and Akka HTTP.

The goal of this Learning Path is to launch learners on the right path to building lighter and faster microservices. It is authored by experts in the field. Sourabh Sharma has more than a decade of experience in product/app development, successfully developing and delivering various standalone and cloud apps. Tomasz Lelek is a software engineer and a fan of the microservices architecture and functional programming.

This Learning Path is all-inclusive and covers building microservices for Java, Scala, and Akka. It is designed to help learners get started in the world of microservices. The course content includes Mastering Microservices with Java, Microservices in Scala, and Building Microservice with AKKA HTTP.