[E-Lang] ELib and Comm note

[Dean Tribble]

I owe Tyler many messages on many topics.

I owe Zooko (and others) a few messages too.

But my time has gone into learning to use ELib (not E) for a distributed 
Java project.  The actual realities of any large scale deployment are 
always interesting, and when I may, I will describe some of them.  I do 
want to make a general comment, however:

I'm impressed :-)  I know most of the focus of the work is on realizing all 
the distribution and security stuff in E, but after an initial learning 
period, the Java use is very comfortable.  The particular thing that 
impressed me was that as I asked questions of the implementation, there was 
almost always an answer, and it was a good one.  For example, "is there a 
way to get the Vat to wake up listening on a particular port?"  One quick 
grep gave me an obvious file to look at, the comment spelled out how to do 
exactly what I wanted to do, the code was clear an obvious about how it 
worked, etc.  There were certainly things that were (are?) mysterious, but 
this satisfying experience happened enough times that I wanted to express 
my appreciation.

Thanks to the people who worked on the comm stuff--I know of MarkM, Bill 
Frantz, Chip Morningstar, and Eric Messick, but I'm sure there are others.

...and thanks to the people who made all this stuff happen (comm, E, ELib, 
etc.) in other ways (e.g., Randy, Crock, Claire, etc.).

I'll certainly continue to suggest ways to make E and ELib better, but I 
wanted to wave a bright flag for the good--and immediately usable--work 
already available.

Dean Tribble

PS and thanks to the list for your patience :-)