This thesis presents the design and implementation of a programming model for autonomous systems. Autonomous systems are distributed systems based on wireless networks, mobile devices and the Internet. They are characterized by the high dynamics with which their configuration evolves. Ad hoc networks, a member of autonomous systems, illustrate this point since in these networks participants can join and leave at any time. Similarly in Peer-to-Peer networks, another member of autonomous systems, users can abruptly decide to no longer share their resources and to join only when needed. Besides voluntary disconnections decided by users, autonomous systems also suffer from disconnections caused by the infrastructure, e.g. network failures, latency, node failures, etc... Disconnections are therefore a key issue in autonomous systems. Programming distributed systems has always proven to be difficult, but programming distributed systems where disconnections play a major role is even more difficult.