Opportunistic networks (OppNets) constitute an appealing solution to complement fixed network infrastructures –or make up for the lack thereof– in challenged areas. Researches in the last few years have mostly addressed the problem of supporting networking in OppNets, yet this can only be a first step towards getting real benefit from these networks. Opportunistic computing goes beyond the concept of opportunistic networking, and provides a new paradigm to enable collaborative computing tasks in such environments. In the realm of opportunistic computing, properly designing, implementing and deploying distributed applications are important tasks. An OppNet-dedicated application must be able to operate and maintain an acceptable level of service while addressing the many problems that can occur in these networks, such as disconnections, partitioning, long transmission delays, transmission failures, resource constraints, frequent changes in topology, and heterogeneous devices. Much of the complexity and cost of building OppNet-dedicated applications can be alleviated by the use of high-level programming models. Such models can be supported by middleware systems capable of transparently addressing all the above-mentioned problems. The work reported in this dissertation focused on providing insight into the fundamental problems posed by OppNets, so as to analyze and solve the problems faced by application developers while dealing with these environments. The research focused on identifying well-known high-level programming models that can be satisfactorily implemented for OppNets, and that can prove useful for application developers. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of application development for OppNets, while assessing the benefits brought about by carefully designed middleware systems, a couple of such systems have been designed, implemented, and evaluated as part of this work. These middleware systems respectively support distributed messaging (through message queues and topics), the tuple-space model, and consensus solving in OppNets. They are supplemented with fully-functional implementations, that can be used in real settings, and that are all distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Real-life experiments and simulations have been realized so as to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of these systems in real conditions.