Most of the hard work is done for you. As a modern, general purpose systems programming language, Modula-3 is lean in design, yet practical and powerful. Ten years of use has made the reference compiler solid and dependable. Current implementations exist for Win32 and popular incarnations of Unix. The Linux port, in particular, receives constant attention.
Several versions are available for download, including the full source tree.
If this reminds you of Java, that's no accident. Network objects Network objects allow us to proceed in stages. First, a spreadsheet can be constructed as a single executable. Next, as multiple processes running on one machine. Finally, as multiple processes running over multiple machines.