XDP: a simple library for teaching a distributed programming module

XDP is a simplified interface to the DP distributed programming library. I describe its use in a course on workstation programming, a pragmatic course whose mission is to cover concurrent programming, graphical user interfaces and event driven programming as well as network and distributed computing. Using XDP, rather than the native socket interface, makes it feasible to cover the last topics, squeezed though they are into a rather overloaded course. Finding (or building) teaching tools like XDP will become increasingly essential as more demands are placed on undergraduate CS curriculum coverage.