A class defines a specific implementation of a type. Classes are used to generate instances. The Guide language supports this object model. It is a strongly typed language with conformity, single inheritance and persistent objects. There is support for concurrency, genericity and exceptions.
Objects are only accessible through typed variables which are used to invoke operations on objects.
At run time, these variables are associated with unique identifiers which are used to name and to locate the objects. The computational model is based on jobs and activities. A job is a multithreaded virtual machine which provides an arbitrary number of sequential threads of control, called activities . Jobs and activities are transparently distributed. Activities communicate through shared objects, which include a synchronization mechanism.