A framework for software development for distributed parallel computing systems based on the parallel object-oriented functional computational model PROOF is presented. The authors approach enables programming to be independent of the configuration of the computing system on which the program is executed. In their approach, the programmer does not need to be bothered by the parallelism in the application or the architectural details. These considerations can be handled at the translation and the allocation stages. Their approach retains the benefits of both the object-oriented as well the functional paradigms.< &gt;