Hi Larry,
Did Plan 9 make it sane? If so, care to say how or
point me at something
like Masscomp's introduction to network programming?
There's Plan 9's dial(2) and friends.
http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/2/dial
The ctl file of a connection takes commands like ‘hangup’.
http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/3/ip
The idea of dial() just doing the right thing lives on with Go's
https://golang.org/pkg/net/#pkg-overview
--
Cheers, Ralph.