We review some results regarding specification, programming and verification of different classes of distributed systems which stemmed from the research of the Concurrency and Mobility Group at University of Firenze. More specifically, we review distinguishing features of network-aware programming, service-oriented computing, autonomic computing, and collective adaptive systems programming. We then present an overview of four different languages,namely KLAIM, COWS, SCEL and AbC. For each language, we discuss design choices, present syntax and informal semantics, show some illustrative examples,and describe programming environments and verification techniques.