RPC

Remote Procedure Call

Call a function on a remote machine like it's local.

When you'd see it: Distributed systems and service-to-service communication. gRPC is a modern RPC framework.

Why it matters: RPC lets code call a function on another machine as if it were local, hiding the network in between. It is a core pattern for microservices, though the hidden network means failures and latency are real in a way local calls are not.