A reflective process algebra called the ρ-calculus facilitates the serialization of processes at the level of the reflective process algebra. The reflective process algebra because of its reflective properties, can be used on computing systems with finite resources. The reflective process calculus can be made to be sensitive to resources, such as memory and bandwidth, hence facilitating its use as a programming language at the machine level. The reflective process calculus causes the dual nature of a computation entity to be exposed. A name can be caused to become a process and a process can be caused to become a name.