The second chapter describes how processes can be assembled together into systems, in which the components interact with each other and with their external environment. The introduction of concurrency does not by itself introduce any element of nondeterminism. The main example of this chapter is a treatment of the traditional tale of the five dining philosophers.
The second part of Chapter 2 shows how processes can be conveniently adapted to new purposes by changing the names of the events in which they engage. The chapter concludes with an explanation of the mathematical theory of deterministic processes, including a simple account of the domain theory of recursion.