Long ago, `actix-web` was built on top of `actix`, a powerful and fast actor system. Now, `actix-web` is largely unrelated to the actor framework and is built using a different system. Though `actix` is still maintained, its usefulness as a general tool is diminishing as the futures and async/await ecosystem matures. At this time, the use of `actix` is only required for WebSocket endpoints.
We call `actix-web` a powerful and pragmatic framework. For all intents and purposes it's a micro-framework with a few twists. If you are already a Rust programmer you will probably find yourself at home quickly, but even if you are coming from another programming language you should find `actix-web` easy to pick up.
An application developed with `actix-web` will expose an HTTP server contained within a native executable. You can either put this behind another HTTP server like nginx or serve it up as-is. Even in the complete absence of another HTTP server `actix-web` is powerful enough to provide HTTP/1 and HTTP/2 support as well as TLS (HTTPS). This makes it useful for building small services ready for production.
