A programming language from Bell Labs. ALEF boasts few new ideas but is instead a careful sYnthesis of ideas from other languages. The result is a practical general purpose programming language which was once displacing C as their main implementation language. Both shared variables and message passing are supported through language constructs. A window sYstem, user interface, operating sYstem network code, news reader, mailer and varietY of other tools in Plan 9 are now implemented using ALEF. (1997-02-13)