title: Any experience programming for BOINC?
body: <p>I am attracted by BOINC for a little project of mine. I heard of BOINC but not read much about how it works, mostly because I am focusing on other priorities right now. What I would like to know is if any of you actually tried to program for BOINC and have a program run on the distributed computer network. In particular I am interested in the following questions:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>How does it work? do you compile the code, post it somewhere and the clients download it and you receive workunit requests and results ?</li>
  <li>What languages does it support? how does it deal with runtimes (I guess you will be able to provide a full, independent package with all the required stuff)</li>
  <li>How do people know that your project exists, and opt-in to participate? </li>
  <li>What services does it provide to make my life easier ? Is there a pre-made library for common tasks ?</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>I prefer real life experience. Wikipedia can be a great source of info but I prefer actual use cases.</p>