Mobile code and "agent systems" were very fashionable 20 years ago. Java introduced built-in RMI with automatic stub downloading. In 1998 Sun published https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jini that was an extension of this idea. Several higher level frameworks emerged (JavaSpaces among the most prolific). Reading the paper two thoughts come to mind: - "What's old is new again" - "those who do not learn from history are doo…
On the same vein, I now take a kick out of people criticizing Java and .NET application servers, while at the same time praising delivering WASM containers with Kubernetes YAML spaghetti into production. Need to get that VC money into the hot WASM space.
But you're right - today's world of YAML programming is no better.
Nix and Guix are steps in the right direction (but both have their fair share of issues)