Re: [9fans] parallel programming in Plan 9

[rog@vitanuova.com]

> However if you have to pass
> messages twixt programs, it doesn't really help deciding what
> the messages should look like or how to marshal them.

...  although i've found that using 9p helps focus the mind on to what
messages are really necessary, and the conventional textual
representation of messages lends itself well to

a) ease of explanation/documentation and
b) proper separation of interface from implementation on both ends of
the connection.

this contrasts with RPC-style marshalling where the RPC interface is
often taken directly from the procedural interface on the server,
which is not necessarily the way that the client would choose to do
things.

i guess the downside is that if you really do have a method that takes
data and in and returns data (not an error indication), you've got 4
messages rather than 2.