As high-speed communication becomes more readily available, the demand for new special-purpose applications will increase. The Programmers' Playground, described in this manual, is designed to provide a set of software tools and a methodology for simplifying the design and construction of applications that interact with each other and with people in a distributed computer system.
This manual explains how to write interactive applications that take advantage of new high-speed communication technology. The only background necessary to get started is an understanding of basic data structures and control constructs in C++. If you already know C++, then with the tools provided by the Programmers' Playground, you will be able to write distributed applications without learning a new programming language and without needing to learn about how communication works in a distributed system.
Available as postscript (.ps) or compressed postscript (.ps.Z).
Washington University Department of Computer Science WUCS-97-14, February 1997. Supersedes WUCS-95-20.