vega, Could you show a safe non-GC version of readInt proc (btw, it shouldn't exist in a networking lib because of undefined size and endianness of int)? As I see it, by introducing raw pointer **async** send/recv procs, stdlib would just move burden to the user. To safely implement readInt you would have to alloc memory on heap (because stack will be destroyed in a moment - it is async), then, when recv is finished, copyMem from there into result, then dealloc. It feels that the amount of overhead would be somewhat similar to seq[byte]/string version.
Serialization procedures normally work with strings. Beyond sending/receiving strings one usually needs sending/receiving basic types in binary form (integers, floats, bools, etc.). So I think it makes more sense to implement the latter in stdlib and either hide unsafe procs from the user or rename them to unsafeSend, unsafeRecv so that it is crystal clear you shouldn't use them unless you understand what you are doing.
