The popularity of the object oriented programming paradigm has stimulated The popularity of the object oriented programming paradigm has stimulated research into its use for parallel and distributed programming. The major issues research into its use for parallel and distributed programming. The major issues which impact such use are concurrency control, object interfaces, binding and which impact such use are concurrency control, object interfaces, binding and inheritance. This paper discusses the relative merits of current solutions to these inheritance. This paper discusses the relative merits of current solutions to these issues and describes an approach based on the use of active objects with issues and describes an approach based on the use of active objects with essentially explicit interfaces and bindings, and composition as a pragmatic essentially explicit interfaces and bindings, and composition as a pragmatic alternative to inheritance. The key feature of our approach is the...