The message-passing in Plan 9 seems basically different from Smalltalk's in that a message is a sequence of bytes, not references to objects. This comes up in t

The message-passing in Plan 9 seems basically different from Smalltalk's in that a message is a sequence of bytes, not references to objects. This comes up in the example in the paper where they pass the name of a file, which the receiver then looks up in its own namespace (hoping to find the intended file both there and accessible). I've used Smalltalk and not Plan 9, so I don't know, but I'd expect that difference in the foundations to make a big difference in what it's like to work in the system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confused_deputy_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confused_deputy_problem for one angle on this.