The pi-calculus is a mathematical formalization of concurrent programs in the same way that lambda calculus is a formalization of computable functions. It is basically a notation that allows you to easily specify concurrent programs, and then rigorously reason about them.
For those wondering about practical application, here's two quick examples on use with distributed, problem solving and web applications. They're both doing precise models with a focus on deadlock prevention.
I love the pi calculus. It's a good starting point for analyzing distributed systems in a rigorous way. If you're interested in learning more about this kind of thing, check out the Kell calculus[0] and it's related calculi
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 54.7 ms ] thread[0]: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/papers/pict/Html/Pict.htm...
One of the links from that article : http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/cs257/archive/jeannette-wing/pi....
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Join-calculus
http://www2.cs.siu.edu/~rahimi/papers/2.pdf
http://www.sersc.org/journals/IJGDC/vol8_no5/13.pdf
[0] http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~bidinger/publi/fmoods2003.pdf
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.
It's regrettable that π looks similar to n, however I think it's a very minor issue that is resolved the second that you click the link.