# ELAN (programming language)

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Educational programming language

Elan Paradigms procedural, structured Designed by C.H.A. Koster, et al. Developer Technische Universität Berlin First appeared 1974; 52 years ago (1974) Typing discipline static, strong Scope Lexical Platform Zilog Z80, others OS EUMEL Website www.cs.ru.nl/elan Influenced by ALGOL 68 Influenced ?

**ELAN** is an [interpreted](/source/Interpreter_(computing)) [educational programming language](/source/Educational_programming_language) for learning and teaching systematic programming.[1] (Note: In May 2023 design commenced on a new programming language named 'Elan' also designed for teaching and learning programming in schools, but it has no historical connection to the 'ELAN' language described here.)

It was developed in 1974 by [C.H.A. Koster](/source/Cornelis_H._A._Koster) and a group at [Technische Universität Berlin](/source/Technische_Universit%C3%A4t_Berlin) as an alternative to [BASIC](/source/BASIC) in teaching, and approved for use in secondary schools in [Germany](/source/Germany) by the "Arbeitskreis Schulsprache". It was in use until the late 1980s in a number of schools in Germany, [Belgium](/source/Belgium), the [Netherlands](/source/Netherlands), and [Hungary](/source/Hungary) for informatics teaching in secondary education, and used at the [Radboud University Nijmegen](/source/Radboud_University_Nijmegen) in the Netherlands for teaching systematic programming to students from various disciplines and in teacher courses.

The language design focuses strongly on [structured programming](/source/Structured_programming), and has a special construction for [stepwise refinement](/source/Stepwise_refinement), allowing students to focus on [top-down](/source/Top-down_and_bottom-up_design#Computer_science) design, and [bottom-up](/source/Top-down_and_bottom-up_design#Computer_science) coding.

The [microkernel](/source/Microkernel) [operating system](/source/Operating_system) [Eumel](/source/Eumel) began as a [runtime system](/source/Runtime_system) (environment) for ELAN.

## See also

- [ALGOL 68](/source/ALGOL_68)

## References

1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** Borovanský, Peter; Kirchner, Claude; Kirchner, Hélène; Moreau, Pierre-Etienne; Ringeissen, Christophe (1998). ["An Overview of ELAN"](https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fs1571-0661%2805%2982552-6). *Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science*. **15**: 55–70. [doi](/source/Doi_(identifier)):[10.1016/s1571-0661(05)82552-6](https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fs1571-0661%2805%2982552-6). [ISSN](/source/ISSN_(identifier)) [1571-0661](https://search.worldcat.org/issn/1571-0661).

## External links

- [ELAN implementation built by the Radboud University Nijmegen](https://www.cs.ru.nl/elan/)

- [ELAN implementation download site](ftp://ftp.cs.ru.nl/pub/vb/)[*[dead link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Link_rot)*]

- [Dresden uni on ELAN](http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/L4/l3elan.html)

- [The (unconnected) UK-based 'Elan' programming language](http://elan-lang.org)

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