Introducing the SockHop system

SockHop is a system that facilitates the development of BeOS applications that run on many machines at once.   It is implemented in a single file (libsockhop.so) that serves as both shared library for client code, and as a server program for remote program invocation and control.  SockHop's primary design goals are ease of use, flexibility, and scalability.  Using SockHop, writing and debugging a BeOS program that runs on many machines at once is not much harder than writing a "regular" multithreaded BeOS program.

Features that SockHop currently supports

Features that will be added to SockHop in a subsequent release Potential Features (ideas that may or may not be implemented) Note on Internet Usage

Although SockHop will work over the Internet (it uses regular old TCP connections), it was not designed with general Internet usage as a priority.  Before using SockHop as the base for a general-use Internet app, consider the following:

If you have suggestions on how SockHop might be made more secure or amenable to running over "the wild untamed Internet",  please email me; I'd love to hear them.  (Of course, the *real* solution for this problem has been implemented and it's called Java; but Java has its own set of limitations, and anyway I am NOT about to write my own JVM!  ;))

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