Newsqueak is a small programming language designed by Ken Thompson in the late 1980s. It is an extension of Alef that sought to merge the best features of C and shell scripting languages. Newsqueak supports object-oriented programming through the use of anonymous functions, message passing, and first-class environments containing closures. Its syntax is clean and expressive, making it easier for developers to write nested procedures without getting tangled in code blocks. Although it has not been widely adopted as a mainstream programming language, Newsqueak has influenced other languages such as Limbo, used in the Inferno operating system for developing distributed systems at Bell Labs.