Sun's announcement of the programming language Java more that anything popularized the notion of mobile code, that is, programs traveling on a heterogeneous network and automatically executing upon arrival at the destination. We describe several classes of mobile code and extract their common characteristics, where security proves to be one of the major concerns. With these characteristics as reference points, we examine six representative languages proposed for mobile code. The conclusion of this study leads to our recommendations for future work, illustrated by examples of ongoing research.