Alef was a concurrent programming language designed by Phil Winterbottom of Bell Labs as part of the Plan 9 operating system. It implemented the channel-based concurrency model of Newsqueak in a compiled, C-like language with static, strong typing, and first appeared in 1992. It shipped with the first and second editions of Plan 9 but was abandoned during development of the third edition. Rob Pike attributed its demise to its lack of automatic memory management and the difficulty of maintaining a variant language across multiple architectures. Its concurrency model was later reproduced for C in the libthread library, allowing Alef programs such as Acme to be translated.
Facts
Classification
Typing Discipline Typing Discipline First Released Connections
Follows Typing Discipline
Entity-backed identity for the typing discipline value this language already carries as an enum fact, resolved to a concept entity by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The enum fact itself stays on the entity unchanged.
Entity-backed identity for the typing discipline value this language already carries as an enum fact, resolved to a concept entity by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The enum fact itself stays on the entity unchanged.
In Field
Source Alef (programming language) (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Wikidata: Alef
- Wikidata Q1895587, resolved via en.wikipedia pageprops (wave rule R-L)
- Wikidata Q1895587 P7078 (typing discipline)
View the SourceAlef (programming language) (Wikipedia)
In Field: Programming Language Theory, Lead sentenceQuote, In Field: Programming Language Theory, Lead sentence
Alef is a discontinued concurrent programming language, designed as part of the Plan 9 operating system by Phil Winterbottom of Bell Labs.
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